


Isle of the Cowled Woman

by bansheesquad (deathwailart)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Banter, F/F, Family Drama, Hunters & Hunting, Kidnapping, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Parent-Child Relationship, Rescue Missions, Scottish Character, Single Parents, Slow Burn, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2020-02-28 16:29:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 60,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18760159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/bansheesquad
Summary: After two separate attacks target the daughters of werewolves and hunters on the same night leaving them at a loss as to motive and how to move on, two mothers and a sister come together to track down whoever is responsible and heal along the way.





	1. Chapter 1

"We'll figure it out," Diana snapped, wholly aware of how inadequate it was as she glanced at the rear-view mirror again. Nothing had changed. Nothing was going to change. There was still going to be a girl there in the backseat, shaking and sweating, covered in blood, whimpering worse than a wounded animal. "Are you listening to me Jilly-bean?" Her voice higher, a pleading sing-song as she groped back awkwardly as she felt her sister turn to her even as the engine roared louder, daring the speed limit out here. 

Her hand closed around an ankle. Felt the pulse fluttering. Felt the clamminess of the skin beneath her fingertips. 

"We'll figure it out," she repeated, not letting go even as it pulled her arm tight. Her sister said nothing, pressing her foot down harder on the accelerator in response.

* * *

Diana didn't remember getting home. Didn't remember getting herself or Jillian out of the car, a blur that involved Jillian crying, Nora shouting and someone else already being there to meet them at the door. Nora. It had to have been Nora but then 'we'll figure it out' was taken out of her hands as Nora held her back, a friend (Erin, it was Erin, only Erin to be trusted like that). 

Something about not something she needed to see, a mum not being the right person. _I'm her mum_ , she wanted to shout at them after Nora came back and shut the door. _I'm her mum I've seen everything, don't do this to me._ Instead she'd paced. Paced and paced even with her ankle throbbing (another thing she couldn't remember, there had been running, shouting, fury and panic and something buried under it) beneath her as Nora sat there waiting without any words between them.

What did you say? What could you say?

Only the door opening, the wet slap of clothes hitting the floor to startle them.

"Burn those." Erin instructed, disappearing again.

Diana lifted them, swallowed tightly. Ruined, of course, and who'd wear something again that'd only be a reminder of—"This is her favourite t-shirt." The grief closed in around her the same time Nora's arms did, a dirty bundle crushed awkwardly between them as she let her younger sister rock her back and forth, back and forth, tears a jammed trigger.

Nora must have taken them eventually though, time slipping through Diana's fingers as her ankle began to swell, left side of her head tender behind the eye as if someone had taken a pickaxe to it with devastating precision when Erin let them in. Reluctantly. But one woman wasn't enough for all that so Diana held Jillian's hands, Nora flushed out wounds, Erin stitched, all of it in silence aside from Jillian's hiccupping breaths, high whines, terrible reedy moaning when her attempts to fight were thwarted by the three women holding her still, urging her to breathe.

"I'm here Jilly-bean, mum's got you, it's going to be okay, listen to me—Jilly—" She had to swallow down the lie, the bubble of panic, the salty acrid taste of it as she kissed the top of her daughter's head, "Jilly deep breaths with me, there's a good girl, it'll all be over soon I promise."

'We'll figure it out' ended with Jillian screaming herself hoarse by the time they were done and that was when Diana broke down on the floor, hands digging into her scalp with her sister at a loose end on the other side of the table.

* * *

There would always be risks. Sophie wasn't a foolish woman by any means, had prepared herself accordingly for what there was in the world, had been prepared, had prepared Violet just the same and then there had been that awful sound. The shot rang out, acrid smoke burning her nose and Violet on the ground, a terrible trembling _noise_ in her throat, Sophie's breath gone out of her as if she'd been the one shot too. A 'no' so soft, so quiet. Horrified. Unwilling to admit for the span between one heartbeat and the next that it was her daughter crumpling to the ground. (She'd pictured it before. Of course she had. Everyone had to and it had gone this way: her, feral, snarling, lunging at the shooter who was in their own way barely human. They sneered, they laughed, their shape blurred at the edges and refused to stay fixed. All the terrible ugliest parts of yourself shaping the sort of person that wants to shoot little girls.)

Instead it was nothing like that.

Instead she couldn't move. Body locked. Tears from shock already blurring her vision. A man she might have passed a hundred times who was unremarkable for how ordinary he was; not unwashed, not greasy, no scars, not in army fatigues or plaid or heavy leathers or denims. An ordinary man staring her down for a long moment, cocking his gun—

And walking away.

Walking away as she fell heavily to her knees, crawled her way over to her daughter, chanting a litany of no as if it would change anything.

"Let me see, please Violet let me see," she soothed, drying her eyes with the heels of her hands even as they filled again, peeling her daughter's hands away, kissing her cheeks. Not much time, already on the clock as she pressed the hands back down tighter with nothing else there. "I'm sorry, I know it hurts."

"Mummy," and that broke her heart, when had Violet said that last when she wasn't joking? "Mummy I'm scared."

Sophie's hands were itching and she'd seen the ugliness of a rash beneath the blood that was already sticky and tacky where it shouldn't have been, not fresh as it was, a sign of the damage being done to Violet on the inside but she couldn't do it here, she couldn't risk it. If he'd wanted a clean kill he'd have gone for her head, her heart, her liver, even the lungs but instead he'd still hit the belly but there wasn't enough bleeding—

No. She had to move, grabbing for her phone with bloodied hands as she tried to take a breath. "I'm bringing Violet—shut up, don't interrupt me! She's been shot. Silver. Get everything ready."

Violet howled when she was hoisted into the car and the front seat, strapped in tight with an old blanket tucked between her and the seatbelt for the sake of doing _something_ , clutching and writing all the way there as Sophie took hold of her hand as often as she dared.

"Almost there sweetheart, just hold on for me, it'll be okay, almost there, almost there."

* * *

Waking came reluctantly to Diana and with the muffled clattering of Nora making breakfast downstairs as if today was like every other day, as if their world hadn't spun madly off its axis and gone veering off faster and faster than they could keep up with. She'd slept on and off. Woken thinking she'd heard Jillian screaming but the house had been quiet, forcing her to muffle her own sobs and gasps so she wasn't the one to have Nora come charging in. Nora didn't need more worries heaped on her plate. The night had instead played itself out over and over as she'd tossed and turned, twisted about on itself as her eyes had started to burn even when she'd tried keeping them open, strung out and exhausted but too wired to completely drop off into sleep. What she'd missed. What might have made a difference. (Nothing. Everything.) It had been so _fast_ in the moment, a lunging, snarling mass that blurred but night bleeding into morning changed it. Bigger. Uglier. Crueller. On the verge of ludicrous, proportions stretched beyond the imagination, a thing of heaving muscle over thick bone that wouldn't have been able to lope as it had, jaws that instead would have bitten off a limb, ripped open a throat.

She couldn't get to Jillian in time. Blood gurgling up, a hand outstretched.

The panic burst and she turned her face to the pillow, wheezed out into it instead of letting the broken noise escape. Or was it fear? That surge of adrenaline meant to get her going because that's how they'd been trained, her and Nora both: fight or flight, freeze or fawn, use what won't get you and yours killed, take down what will. Same as she'd been teaching Jillian.

Use it. Use it. Use it. What was it (she couldn't breathe even when she turned away from the soggy mess of the pillow, scrubbing her hands down an itching face, swollen and hot) that she'd learnt? Something about thinking, how it carved its way through everything else, kept you running when the body screamed, forced the plans to fruition? It sounded right or close enough in her head and wrong. Whoever had taught her had aimed down the sight, taken a deep breath, squeezed a trigger. Braced themselves and gripped the knife to puncture where there wasn't bone. They hadn't—

She couldn't even admit it in the privacy of her thoughts, guilt and shame scalding her worse than the tears.

This, whatever it was, it was nailing her to the bed allowing her to move enough now to not suffocate herself in the pillows because some animal instinct persisted despite that aching voice lurking when you'd been kicked down hard enough. The one that wanted a good dark quiet corner to curl up in. Instead she stared at the ceiling as her heart pounded at odd intervals, sweating and shivering, shivering and sweating by turns, sobs hitching when she had the breath for them or strangling her when she didn't. A double failure. Mother. Hunter. No words to give to her daughter.

We'll figure it out. Some plan. If that was all that she'd been carved down to—

"I knocked."

She jerked at the bed dipping at the same time as Nora's hand settled on her hip over the blankets before her sister curled on her side, lying opposite the way they had years ago. When Nora had been scared. When Nora wanted the story to keep going when mum and dad went to bed. When Nora had secrets to whisper. Nora with eyes red-rimmed and a watery smile.

Diana hadn't heard her come in, had nothing in the tank to be startled by her sister showing up and instead tilted her head away. She sounded the way she did when she'd been on a hunt for a few days straight downing terrible coffee that turned to sludge when she forgot to empty the thermos right away. 

"Hey, you listening to me?" Diana blinked, turning her head back in time for Nora to have the bed shifting beneath them as she rose up on her knees to peer down, face huge and pale, a great moon looming. "I said you need to eat."

"I can't." A rasp. Not even that. Not something that hurt but Diana wanted it to, felt that it should, somehow, after all of it.

"What good'll you be if you're fainting or sick because you're eating nothing? Or going into shock because of—" Nora cut herself off, mouth pursed up and arms folded as if she could hold the words in, snatch them back up. 

"Aye, because I was that useful last night, wasn't I? _Christ_ Nora." It was too much effort to shout as much as she wanted to with Nora right there, something just _there_ for her. Something soft. Something that would take it if she dished it out. What had she done last night when the screaming had finally stopped? Walked away. Walked away and left Nora and Erin to it, the devastation no less crushing in the light of morning.

The blanket rustled as Nora collapsed down next to her instead of leaving, rolling them both up, sweaty and soggy and disgusting as Diana had to be by now. "We'll figure it out," she whispered, sounding no more sure than Diana herself had last night, and it wasn't comforting to hear that but it was something. "That means you need to get yourself a wash. Something to eat and drink. Then go see your girl, listen—Oi, listen." Nora held her fast when she tried to pull away and get free, holding Diana through the struggles until they subsided. "She needs you, what do you think she's going to be thinking when she wakes up? She's no daft."

"She'll…god. I don't know. I tried so hard, Nora, tried to keep her safe and—"

"I don't mean that bit, that's…we'll talk that bit later, I'm talking the bit where she wakes up and knows. Or has to be told, Erin doesn't know what she'll remember. Think about that part. Where she was out with the two of us and was one thing then she wakes up hurting and stitched as something else, something completely different under her skin. That's her life now. One night and everything's different. Even if she can still be her—"

"What if she thinks she's a monster?" Diana finished the thought softly, hardly daring to say it even when she knew she had to. None of it was fair but that was the truth: what else might she think? She tried shaking it away, regretting that when her head pulsed violently, the curious sensation of stepping on broken glass exploding behind her left eye. "God, Nora, did we—I mean I've tried not to let her think that about anyone."

"I know but," the arms pulled her tighter, Nora's tone conciliatory. "But she was bitten and we can't change that, we don't know how that's going to feel or what she _honestly_ thinks underneath it, all I know is that _I'd_ be more than scared, I'd be terrified. You'd be the same. Maybe other times she'd know better or think it through. If it was someone else but there's horror stories everywhere we've told them, I know that I've said things I wanted to take back but you can't."

"You turn them into a teachable moment, right?" Diana snorted softly, closed her eyes again as the room span slowly until she forced them back open. She pushed herself up then onto her knees as Nora settled, breathing evening out even as she fought at it, rubbing her face, heels of her hands dug into her eyes. "Get some sleep, I'll be careful not to drown, promise, and I'll eat. See if Jillian'll be tempted, she'll need to have something with painkillers. We can put our heads together after."

"Figure it out?" Nora's voice was already thick and starting to slur. Diana muttered a quiet agreement, kissing her head then pulled up the covers. "I know someone to ring okay?"

* * *

A pack were many things but Sophie had known them to be familiar even at the fringe of consciousness; a solid steady presence of smells, voices, heartbeats that settled her, that settled any of them. Not today. The acrid note of anxiety threading through them, feeding one to the next to her as she bounced her knee until it throbbed steadily up through the ball of her foot to her hip. Pitter-patter heartbeats now racing, spiking. Still, she'd take it over the blood thick enough to taste in the back of her throat mingling with the antiseptic and the—there wasn't a name she had for whatever's rolling off Violet in ugly waves where she'd curled herself tight against her mother, her heartbeat steadying under Sophie's fingers whenever she checked it. A promising sign. Not clammy as she'd been either. Now that the vomiting had passed a little after one in the morning with her body purging the worst of it she'd been declared out of the woods.

If it had been wolfsbane…but no. No that wasn't something Sophie would allow herself to think about here and now. Here and now there was her daughter, alive, mumbling in her sleep and shifting to get comfortable on top of Sophie's numb arm. After all she'd been there, done that, someone's fingers down her throat to get it up and out while her heart hadn't known what to do, eyes streaming, confused and struggling to breathe. 

Not that her memories were as clear as they might have been but given the circumstances it still stood out.

Violet let out a groan that edged into a whine as Sophie offered out her free arm, wrist beneath her nose. She settled after a long moment, colour improving when the restlessness passed. "I only hunt monsters," Sophie found herself repeating. "Anyone who hurts and kills, if you're living your life, you're living your life, you do you." It comforted her now as it had then even if it had come from a hunter until the idea of one had the growl rising up and out of her chest almost before she could bury it again, not wanting to wake Violet before she was ready. Sleep would be crucial for her now and it was too soon for her to be awake after a silver round and that reaction, far too soon, but the reaction had her wincing all the same.

What was she going to do with it when Violet _did_ wake up? With her ragged edge of a voice, the mistrust that hadn't lived in her teeth until now. 

There were feet at the door – Holly – and then the door was opened, wild ginger corkscrews before her face peered in. "Soph? Thought you'd still be in here: brought you something since no one thought you'd be ready to leave her alone just yet."

"Thank you." It took a few moments of working her throat to get the words to come out, stomach growling to fill the silence. "C'mon, have a seat I could use someone else in here."

"Violet's good. Not—I don't mean it the way that sounds, it's not 'oh she's been shot, that's fine' but it could've been worse and we've had worse. I know how _that_ sounds. Still. There she is. Wee fighter." Sophie took the tray, barely tasting the porridge though it was good, made with care and sweetened because they'd have known she'd barely slept, a woman in need of something to keep her awake a while longer. "We've got eyes and ears out, no one'll take risks but no one's going to just let this go. D'you have any ideas? Any at all?"

"Bit of a longshot," Sophie admitted, not as reluctant as she thought she'd be but anything felt worth a shot right now. "D'you remember that hunter that helped me out a while back?"

"The one who knew some good wolfsbane tricks? I wrote them down, sent them round as many folk as I could y'know."

"Yeah, that one. Get my phone will you? I need to see if I can get hold of her."

* * *

It was the smell that hit her first, the astringent tang of antiseptic that clung to everything in the room almost cloyingly so, the lighting fortunately not as harsh as a hospital but still humming the same way. Diana's stomach rolled, shiver passing down her spine where her hair clung wetly to the back of her neck where it was drying after a shower where her legs had come out from beneath her. Nora was asleep in her bed, tucked in where she'd managed it, not wanting to wake her to get her legs under the duvet with her face lax and mouth open enough to slobber on the pillow.

Normally Diana would've grabbed her phone to take a picture. Maybe she should've because right now, standing with a tray in the open doorway of the little makeshift medical room she couldn't think of what to say as Jillian lay still under blankets tangled about her feet, an IV still in her left arm. A precaution. Maybe. God why couldn't she remember anything right now? She _knew_ , she knew that she knew but it had tucked itself away somewhere and it was only white noise, the increasing tick-tick-tick of her panic as she found a wheeled table to set the breakfast tray on, a chair for her to settle in as she finally got her first look at Jillian in the morning after.

"We'll figure it out," she said softly to herself, stroking her hand over the back of her daughter's head because there was no better thermometer in the world than a parental hand. Clammy but not feverish. Hair sweaty where it had been brushed back and she'd be in need of a shower or some sort of wash, something more than getting rid of last night. A pale face with great bruises under the eyes that belonged to someone far older, a flush on her cheeks, down the throat to where a papery gown covered her up. "Oh _sweetheart_ ," she crooned it soft and low, lips to that warm forehead and Jillian moaned, kicking the blanket off and onto the floor as she groaned and tried to push herself awake.

That was when the huffing started, the frantic tugging and Diana swore quietly, looking to her wrists that were cuffed to the bars of the bed _how bad had it been that she'd been tied down?_

"Jillian, Jillian hold still let me—Give me a second here." It took longer with the squirming, those eyes that wouldn't focus staring at her or past her and trying not to jostle the IV that could come out now (Nora must've changed it while she was asleep, it would've have lasted all that time from last night to the morning but when Erin had left, Diana hadn't a clue). She murmured nonsense throughout, found the silliest plaster to stick on the inside of Jillian's elbow and kissed it the way she'd done since Jillian had been old enough to start getting cuts and scrapes. Since Jillian had been at the doctor getting her jags as a baby. 

_Mummy'll kiss it better, see? There we go, no more tears! All gone!_ Jillian would hiccup through the last, sniffling as she smiled despite herself sometimes or laughed and maybe it wouldn't all be better but the worst of it would.

Diana couldn't do that this time as she scrambled for the blankets and cried out, a punched out breathy trembling noise, hyperventilating through her nose as her head lolled until Diana could get to the blankets and have an arm around her back.

"Deep breaths, with me, in and out, in…and out…" She needed them as badly herself when her heart slammed hard in her chest, almost kicking over the table in her hurry to help but Jillian was upright finally. The colour back in her face after turning a pasty grey with her face between her knees as far as she could manage. "There we go. Oh Jilly-bean."

" _Mum_." Her voice was a croak and a plea, and mindful of whatever stitches lurked beneath the gown and blankets, Diana gathered her daughter to her, tucking her head under her chin to let her bawl herself out wetly in the hollow of her throat, rubbing circles on her back. If she understood one word in ten then it was a generous estimate but Jillian was speaking or trying to until she pulled back, wet and blotchy, scrubbing at herself and her bloodshot eyes. "I'm thirsty, can I—"

"Here, sorry it's whatever was in the fridge here, there's a straw, do you want—" Four hands and still they managed to fumble the glass, orange juice spilling over Diana's hand that she ended up licking off as Jillian sipped it as slowly as she could, holding it out for more. "Do you think you could eat? You'll need to take painkillers and antibiotics. Probably. Pretty sure Erin'll have left instructions but I've not looked around and your auntie's asleep but you should eat after that. If you can."

"It really hurts."

"I know, darling, I know. But it'll hurt more if you take something with nothing in you and get sick or your stomach is so empty that it chews itself. Even just a wee bit of toast. Some cereal? I can make pancakes."

"You've never made pancakes."

"Yes I have."

"You've never made not-burnt pancakes."

Diana managed a laughed and wheeled the tray over to reveal the selection. Toast that was mostly cold. Cereal and milk to the side. Whatever fruit had lurked in the kitchen. More juice because everyone knew the dry mouth from painkillers and fevers, waking up with as if your tongue had fused itself to the roof of your mouth never to unstick.

"Can you cut the banana in the cereal for me? My arm is all wonky; did I fall on top of it?"

"Maybe. Last night is all a blur right now and I wasn't let in here when you—when Erin—" Diana stood. She couldn't look at her daughter and tell her she'd been unable to stay with her even if she'd been ordered out. She should've argued. Should've been able to do something more than be outside the door with Nora. Should've had a plan instead of this careful talking around what they were supposed to be talking about. Instead she found a scalpel, unsealed it and set to work on the banana over whatever cereal she'd snagged from the cupboard, clean quick cuts over the bowl. "How's the one feel where you got jagged?"

"Erin was good, it doesn't feel like I had a big needle in it all night." Jillian twisted her arm to poke at the neon purple and pink plaster until her mouth puckered. "It _was_ a big needle, right?"

"Big needle for an IV, you've never had one of those before." _You'll never have one of those again._ How they'd gone all that time without her having one before, they'd been lucky, maybe. "Nora had her appendix out when she was about your age you know."

"I know, any time someone has bad cramps she thinks it's something wrong with your appendix if it's that side." Jillian laughed weakly then tried to shimmy herself up the bed before giving up as her feet slithered away on the paper sheets. Diana watched her, torn over what it was she was meant to do with the memories of her own fights independence, sticky banana fingers, and not knowing if her touch would even be welcome now and by the time she made a decision to put down the bowl and give a hand, Jillian was most of the way to upright, hands out. "I'm starving."

"That's good." Did it sound convincing? God she hoped it sounded convincing because there wasn't much else she could really do here and now. "Doesn't mean you're getting out of the Dioralyte mind, not enough of what you'll be needing in one banana."

A low mournful noise escaped Jillian around a mouthful of banana and cereal, spoon bobbing as she swallowed. "But I had an IV!"

"And you lost a lot of blood, went into shock, might have an infection going on in there – painkillers and antibiotics are after this – and you—" Her jaw snapped shut, catching the edge of her tongue on the left side, a hot sting and the tang of blood heady in her mouth as she breathed sharply through her nose.

Jillian's spoon clinked sharply in the bowl as she shovelled food in, chewing hard, her own breathing as heavy until she set it down on the table with a clatter. "So we're not going to say it? That's it; we just talk around it and then what?"

"Jilly-bean—"

"Don't! Don't _Jilly-bean_ me like I'm six, I'm not," she heaved in a deep breath and rubbed at her face with the heels of her hands as Diana reached for her this time, swallowing past the lump. "Mum what am I? I couldn't see it, but I know what happened to me. I remember it. I can feel it. The stitches I want to scratch. I was bitten and now I—I—"

"You're still my girl, Jillian, don't ever think otherwise, you are _always_ going to be mine and I will always love you. If I make you think that then you tell me, you tell me that I've said something or done something to make you feel that because I _never_ want that for you." Diana didn't pull Jillian in. She waited. Allowed Jillian to curl herself up and into her arms with a wet wailing, gentle where all the hurt places were hidden away under her gown, careful circles rubbed on her back. "We are what we are but that's never stopped us from having werewolf friends, werewolves we leave alone to get on with their lives because they're people like us outside of that one fraction of their lives."

 _You know this_ , she wanted to say because you taught the important lessons early to have them sink in, to have them be a living, breathing part of someone otherwise you had no solid foundation. _We both taught you this, you asked questions, you checked everything._

"They're as human as we are. Same chance to make a poor judgement call, to be good people, bad people, everything in between," she continued as the damp spot grew while Jillian hiccupped herself out as best she could, pulling back to rub at her face. 

"I need a drink," Jillian whispered, face red and puffy. 

"Okay. Okay." Diana got up reluctantly, taking her time with the dioralyte that she handed over with a straw, steadying it while Jillian took a drink. 

"What if I can't control it when it happens?"

It was soft enough and mumbled around the straw so Diana had to ask her to repeat it twice before she caught the whole thing and her heart broke again.

* * *

Nora woke up with the dull ache behind her eyes that reminded her of uni days and hangovers, tongue thick in her mouth, hot and sweaty, all twisted up in a duvet she hadn't remembered falling asleep under. In her jeans and a t-shirt. Something was wrong, something was crawling against her hip, writhing, trying to get out or burrow deeper in, she couldn't decide as she clawed herself awake, preparing to dig her hand into a pocket that would surely be full of bees—

Her phone.

It was her bloody _phone_ and it was already halfway through the afternoon and she was fumbling it to her ear, still buzzing before she managed to answer the thing.

"'lo?" She tried then held it away and cleared her throat, sitting up until her spinning head forced her to fall back against the pillows in a room that definitely wasn't hers because the curtains were ugly as sin. "Sorry, hello, this is Nora?"

"Hi, Nora, it's Soph. We—well I don't know if you can say we worked together, exactly, but we had a bit of a _thing_ and I could really use the help right now."

"Soph…Jesus Christ Soph, how've you been it's been a bit hasn't it?"

"Yeah, yeah it's been—" Sophie paused and this time Nora did manage to sit up, closing her eyes as the room swam because it was better to not see the bed slowly revolving. "Violet got shot."

Sophie's shaky breath had crackled through the phone line, the three words enough to have Nora clutching it tight in her hand, plastic creaking and her palm pulsing. 

"Nora? You there?"

"Yeah I am…Liv I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, is she…"

"Stable. It was silver, not on the full moon for the difference that makes, and we know what we're doing with that but you know what you're doing on your end too so I was wondering if you had anything."

That got Nora up, awake, swinging her legs out the side of the bed with her other hand on the wall all the way to the toilet where she jammed the cold tap on, held the phone away and stuck her head under, gulping greedily until her tongue unstuck itself from the roof of her mouth, the slosh of water in her stomach a lead weight that forced her down to the floor once she turned it off again, wiping the wet side of her face with the back of her hand.

"Sorry," she mumbled, the edge of the bath digging under her shoulders as she leant back, head lolling heavily. "I'm just up."

"You sound—Look, Nora is everything good with you?"

"Honestly no. My niece got bitten." There was a curse on the other end of the line and Nora pinched the bridge of her nose tight enough to sting. "You calling say your girl Violet got hurt that way…I don't know, maybe it's just too little sleep, too much panic brain but that doesn't sit right."

"No. Two of them, one night? They'd have to make the choice to turn and do it." She could almost picture Sophie's face when she blew out a sigh, the purse of her lips for the shake in it. "And someone shooting my girl?"

"Shooting her with silver means it's one of us or someone who knows enough, they're not the standard bullets anyone packs these days unless they've reason to do go carrying them, I mean we're not even somewhere that people have guns. Narrows it down." God she hoped she'd remember that later in the day, she wasn't up to getting her legs under her to go rummaging through her sister's drawers (ordinarily that'd get a snort out of her) for a pen and paper to start taking notes. "At least it wasn't wolfsbane."

"Aye, that's about the only good side I could see before she woke up. I wouldn't wish it on anyone and I made it out by the skin of my teeth there."

At least they both managed a laugh, the strangest things that drew you together like digging out bullets and forcing a werewolf to throw up as you had a knee on her back to stop her from fighting you when she was defiant, refusing to do what would make her better. Trying to get a little girl to do that…

"How's she doing?" Nora asked, drawing her knees up to her chest so she could rest her forehead on them even if it muffled her voice. Sophie could still hear her.

"Awake. More out of it than I'd like so she's still in shock but there's someone with her so she doesn't think she's alone, enough antibiotics to keep a farm afloat. What about your Jillian?"

"I haven't been down to see if she's up, needed to get Diana in there but she was stable, stitched, had someone help get a drip in her and probably antibiotics too. It'll be what comes after and honestly?" She hesitated, teetered on the brink of loyalty to her sister and someone who was out of her depth. "We've never had a situation like this on our hands, I don't know what we're supposed to do."

"We could come. Violet'll bounce back faster than Jillian," it wasn't bragging to say it, a simple statement of fact. "Plenty of folk end up with us, some of them through your lot and it might…well it might help."

"I'll need to check with Diana first but I know that I'd appreciate it."

"Of course, it's her daughter." There was another voice, a man's, low and husky, too indistinct for Nora to make out the words. "I need to go. Give it a think and call me back, we're going to start looking into what we can here and I'll get back to you when we find something. You take care, give your sister and Jillian my love, we'll be thinking of them."

"Same to you both, give her a hug from me."

"Will do."

The line went dead and Nora set the phone down next to her, blowing out a sigh of her own. She had to go downstairs herself, check in on things and catch up with Diana, see Jillian with her own two eyes but the lino was cold, her head was hot and she allowed herself to roll on her side and lie down again listening to the beat of her heart. 


	2. Chapter 2

"And where do you think you're going?"  
  
Violet stopped in her tracks immediately, palms braced on the table, socked feet flat on the floor, eyes almost comically wide at being caught.  
  
"To pee?"   
  
"I thought you didn't need to go when you were asked?"  
  
"Well I didn't need  _then_ , I need to go now."  
  
"So you won't mind me giving you a hand on the way then will you?"  
  
Mouth pursed, Violet grudgingly offered her hand only to groan with wounded dignity when Sophie wrapped an arm around her waist to tug her close and support her on the way to the toilet. " _Mu-um_!"  
  
"You were  _shot_!" Sophie didn't mean to snap but there was a gauze pad that she couldn't see right now. Stitches under that. An angry rash from the silver because it had been silver. Because the person had  _known_. Silver still steadily working itself out through her bloodstream; they'd be monitoring the fever for days and checking her liver for weeks to be certain her first real exposure hadn't caused lasting damage. "Sorry if I worry about you deciding you're going to go making a break for it."  
  
"I wasn't making a break for it," but Violet couldn't look at her, a certain guilty tug to her mouth and refusal to meet her mother's eyes. She was breathing heavily too, her skin ashen.  
  
"Word for the wise: next time you do try, don't go for it in just your socks and your funky llama pyjamas maybe."  
  
"No one suspects the girl in funky llama 'jamas." Violet whispered it as she fumbled the door handle, managing it on the third attempt. "Don't listen, I can't go if someone's listening to me."  
  
"I've got better things to do than listen to you widdle."  
  
"Oh my god  _mum_!" With that embarrassed huff, Violet tried to slam the door but she didn't lock it because she had sense in her head after all considering that she  _had_  been shot. The tap was turned on before Sophie could move to give her privacy or to mask that Violet hadn't needed to go at all and had really just wanted to spring herself up and out of bed at the first available moment (she'd find out  _exactly_  who was supposed to be keeping an eye on her when she'd been on the phone and they'd rue the day) when Violet started talking. "Who was on the phone?"  
  
"A friend; she helped me out the last time I got shot a few years ago actually. Her name's Nora."  
  
"Fancy pants gun slinging poison expert Nora?"  
  
"That's the one, I'll need to tell her she should add all that to her business card."  
  
"She saved your life. I think that means she gets to add cool stuff to her name."  
  
"Me too." It made her smile, glad that she was able to after everything but maybe it was the exhaustion derailing her brain. "They're not having a good time of it on her end—"  
  
The toilet flushed and she waited until Violet was back out, helping her over to the bed again before she kept going because her face was pale for the most but pink across the cheeks though she let her sit up. "Her niece was bitten."  
  
"Shi—um…that's…that's bad, is she—"  
  
"She made it through, stable and everything but I said that if it was good with Nora's sister we'd maybe stop in and give a hand. If you're up for it."  
  
"We?"   
  
"She's about ages with you and she'll be scared. You were born what you are, you haven't known different but I thought that it might be good for her to meet someone else and have someone her age to talk to, besides, I need to go talk to her mum and Nora. You get shot and she gets bitten on the same night? It's worth looking into, it's not normally how that goes. What're you thinking?"  
  
"How soon can I pack a bag and escape the madhouse? Davey's driving me up the wall, I sent him out because I said his aftershave was gieing me the boak. I feel bad, it wasn't, well, not really, not more than it usually does it's always that weird cheap stuff that smells like the lads after PE but he was  _hovering_." Violet's face had twisted up into such a state of anguish that Sophie found herself hard-pressed not to laugh; Davey was an earnest soul, tripping over his own feet in his eagerness to please and she couldn't go bring down the wrath of an angry mother on him now if he'd been the last one about. "I think he'd been crying. I'm not dead."  
  
"You could've been, Vi, do you have  _any_  idea how lucky you are to be up and on your feet this fast?" Incredulity strained her voice and she found herself reaching for her daughter's hands to anchor herself so she wouldn't go off and do something stupid. "A normal gunshot, that slows us down, has us hurting but silver is throwing something else in the mix and you think that you know but you don't."  
  
"Didn't."  
  
"No, you don't. You aren't out of the woods yet; do you think we're all taking shifts just for the fun of it or to baby you? There aren't epipens for werewolves having a reaction to silver because it's not the same as a normal allergy and a bullet's not the same as someone getting hit by a hollow-point."  
  
"That's what I was shot with?" Sophie nodded in response to the question, jerking her head to the kidney dish on the other side of the bed. "Oh my god that's the bullet I was—I didn't think it'd look like that."  
  
"It's a hollow-point, they mushroom."  
  
"No, it's not that, I watch CSI when it's on, they've got bullets but I thought it'd have gone bad, my skin is horrible, Holly let me peek." Her hands twitched down. Sophie knew the urge to scratch that lurked until her daughter remembered that her hands weren't her own now. "It's not just a rash, it's gone purple, almost blue."  
  
"Argyria. It should go away; it wouldn't for most people and if it doesn't we'll get it out."  
  
"I—how?"  
  
"Needle. Suck it out." She slurped, exaggerated it and Violet laughed until she was coughing, tears in the corners of her eyes; this time when Sophie pushed, she allowed herself to be guided back down, bed tipped with her feet up. "D'you want anything? You don't need to sleep all the time, you must be bored."  
  
"Can we watch a film maybe? Or just watch something? Unless you need to ring anyone else."  
  
"No, they can all wait."  
  


* * *

  
  
"So we'll tell her together then?"  
  
"Aye, I mean honestly Nora? Does it matter if she says yes or no – if she doesn't want to talk to them, fine, I can understand that because it'll be staring in a mirror, maybe she's not ready – but I am out of my depth here. I'm drowning and I'm not going to say no to a lifeline."  
  
Diana watched the tension ebb out of her sister. The inch her shoulders dropped.   
  
"D'you think I'd say no?"  
  
"I don't know," Nora admitted as she slumped across the kitchen table, rolling her neck from side to side, Diana wincing at how loudly it popped. She'd need to get that seen to before she couldn't turn her neck properly again. "It felt like I was overstepping maybe, she's my friend, not yours. You've met her but Jillian's your daughter too, after I got off the phone I didn't know if I should've told her anything either."  
  
"You did the right thing. I can't know what it's like to be a werewolf, she's got a werewolf daughter and there's something to this, her lassie being shot and all. I can imagine how she'll be feeling about it."  
  
"You, um, you spoken to—"  
  
"Oh yeah."  
  
"That bad?"  
  
"'Hi Iona, it's Diana. Our daughter was attacked by a werewolf, she's alive but she's been bitten. She's not really talking about it and I'm shitting a brick here.'"  
  
"That actually how it went?"  
  
Diana smacked Nora's hand as she started drumming her fingers on her empty mug. "More or less." She sighed over the rim of her own, mostly cold by now but she still forced it down. "I mean at least she knows, can you imagine trying to have that chat with someone who didn't? Nightmare. She's not—Christ of course she's angry, she's upset, she's relieved she's not dead but she's going to come up to see her and that'll be…"  
  
Nora made a low noise that was—Well Diana decided today wasn't the day to go interpreting it if she wanted to keep what was left of her sanity. "When's she coming?"  
  
"Whenever she gets here, that's what she said."  
  
"That's enough time to…" Nora trailed off when Diana caught her eye and shook her head. Not today. Today she wasn't in the mood for jokes. "So. What do you want me to do?"  
  
"Not take sides. Keep the peace. Fuck off if that's what it calls for even if you don't want to. Jillian  _has_  to come first."  
  
"I know." Diana lifted an eyebrow, listening to the huff. Defeated. Maybe. "Fine, fine, I'll play mum and make you tea or stay with Jilly-bean if that's what it needs but it wasn't your fault. It wasn't a full moon. It wasn't a hunt. We don't have the rep—"  
  
"Still hunters. Still known. Still paints a target on her back."  
  
"Oh hello Iona, lovely to see you, how's London treating you, still sneezing black gunk when you get off the tube?"  
  
"I could slap the face off your face sometimes. It's not a joke!" The screech of her chair against the floor matched the headache brewing behind her left eye that hadn't gone away, one side of her face tender by turns ever since she'd fallen asleep after Jillian had been declared stable. Diana dumped her mug in the sink and jammed the tap on harder than necessary, water splashing up her arms and the front of her jumper. Petty. But Nora was just as guilty in her mind so why should she care?   
Nora, evidently as guilty as Diana had judged, didn't let the silence linger long. Not that Diana turned to look at her. That'd be winning. Some things you never grew out of and it was better to let her sister stew.  
  
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, I love her but she's not mine the way she's yours and Iona's. Still doesn't change the fact that something's off and we need to not be drowning ourselves in more than we have to while we find our way out of it, all right?"  
  
"Right. Right." She splashed water on her face and let it drip down because it was that kind of day, it was going to be that kind of day for who knew how long as she turned the cold tap off and sat back down, rubbing her face with her sleeves. "I need to ring Erin too, have her come by and see how Jillian's doing."  
  
"She's had all the IVs though."  
  
"You're meant to be Missus Research: it's an infection, there's an immune response, it's entirely foreign to her body and there's only so much we can do while she adjusts, anything that stresses her out is going to make it worse. It's still too early for a lot of the blood tests for anything that might've been in his mouth." Diana heard the snap in her mouth same as it coiled in her jaw and took the high road in stalking out of the room.  
  
"Where you going?" Nora called after her.  
  
"Change my jumper, soaked myself."  
  
 _Away to soak my head more like it_ , she thought to herself, stalking out of the kitchen and up the stairs.  
  


* * *

  
  
As it transpired, Iona had taken the sleeper service so she arrived on their doorstep sooner than expected, before the werewolves arrived and if that was for ill or good, Diana didn't have the capacity to say. There were enough plates spinning anyway, some of them wobbling precariously as she watched their progress, considered reaching out, but then wondered if that would be the thing to send them toppling down to the ground to shatter.  
  
So in the end Iona's visit had gone how it had gone: the arguments that couldn't be avoided when any child was hurt and there was a chance to portion out the blame, when said child swung between talkative when it came to everything else except what had happened and a wall of silence that turned to tears and shouting for seemingly no reason. Or maybe the only reasons that mattered: no one there knew what it was to be her and they reluctantly withdrew.  
  
Erin's visit was well-timed, a balm with at least some comforting news. No signs of other infections. Wounds healing nicely.   
  
"She's still in the active phase," Erin explained, "it varies depending on several factors we can get into how long it takes to progress from active to latent infection but she'll get there and that should help with some of her signs and symptoms."  
  
"Latent meaning?" Iona asked, clutching her mug tight in her hands. Diana remembered her doing it years ago. Colic. Chicken pox. First broken bones. The time she'd been running round Iona's parents' house, slipped on the rug, slammed her head into the door then fainted after holding her breath, the hospital trip that had followed after that one.  
  
"Inactive or dormant meaning until it's suitable for it to manifest which with a werewolf is under the full moon or periods where adrenaline is heightened." Erin smiled, small, encouraging. Diana took it that way. It sounded easy enough for someone on the outside.  
  
"So that's how they -  _werewolves_  - don't show up all the time or, god, I don't know what I'm saying—"  
  
"Hey, this bit is new. It's scary." Diana reached over to squeeze Iona's arm without thinking and it wasn't shrugged off as she feared. "And some stories you hear about people in A and E? Might be werewolves reacting especially if they don't have a pack to belong to or people to help them out but they're still people, same as everyone else, it's how they should be treated, just with a condition that needs managed and monitored same as anyone else would need it monitored or managed. Most of them do it themselves and we leave off, can't blame them."  
  
"Well you've got the guns, silver and wolfsbane in the house."  
  
Nora pulled a face and Diana kicked her. That had been a sticking point from before they got married. It was why all of that had been here, an easy agreement for having a baby but Nora hadn't ever understood it.  _We grew up with knives and guns in the house, we turned out fine!_  She'd argued. Diana couldn't remember what she'd said then but looking at it now, four of them around a table she could only think  _did we, Nora, did we really?_  
  
"That's temporary. This was the nearest place we could get to where we had somewhere we could treat her. If she'd been worse? Hospital. If Erin had wanted a hospital? That's where we would've gone. But this is all familiar to her," Diana explained as calmly as she could and Iona was nodding so that was something, at the very least. "Anything that might stress her out more is something I wanted to avoid and honestly? I don't know what I'm doing."  
  
"We're figuring it out." Nora was backing her up for what little they'd discussed beforehand with this, not taking sides, and it sounded neutral to Diana's ears but she wasn't on Iona's side of it.   
  
"She's…I thought she'd look worse. Out of a horror film even if that's not what happens, you've all told me it's not what happens and I've seen it too." Iona took a sip of her tea and Diana let go of her. "But she's not talking the way she normally does, she's off."  
  
"Other people are coming to help with that. Hopefully. As much as they can if you're okay with it." Diana cleared her throat and coughed, suddenly so dry it seemed to stick to itself.  
  
"You've got counsellors for this?"   
  
"No." Was that too quick? Well she'd said it now, couldn't unrung that bell. "A werewolf and her daughter, the girl's about ages with Jillian, if anyone might be able to prepare her—"  
  
"It's someone else living like her," Iona finished, already nodding her head, clicking her tongue a couple of times. "How well do you know them? The usual way? If what you're saying about stress and everything is true, even if they know something, seeing complete strangers might be a bad thing for her. I know I don't know everything about this but I'm her mum too."   
  
"I know the girl's mum, I helped her out when some arsehole decided to poison her with wolfsbane for no reason beyond: oh that's a werewolf, all of them deserve to be gotten rid of like we're back in the dark old days." Nora's jaw was clenched now, foot knocking against the table leg. How she hadn't managed to grow out of being a fidget at her age was beyond Diana, or maybe she only noticed it now, had she ever noticed it this much before? "She's good, actually she rang me up because her girl was shot, same night and I'd be having to go and check that out because it's…we keep the kids out of it. No one talks about it much but we're all meant to be keeping kids out of it and Jillian came up too so it sounded like a good idea. If everyone agreed."  
  
"Jesus Christ who goes about shooting wee girls? Don't answer that, I know the types normally." Iona worked in the city, she was still in her rumpled suit speaking of how fast a trip she'd made from London up north of the border to see her daughter in a time like this. "No, no I agree it's a good idea if you can vouch for them. I don't—look I can't be here for that, I needed to see her. See she was alive. Talking. That she wasn't—That she was okay but I can't be here for whatever has to happen."  
  
"Okay," Diana said, and Erin got to her feet, taking Nora with her. Nora went reluctantly, mouth opening and closing until Diana waved her out. Whatever it was it could wait. "Look it's okay, she'll understand, I don't think she even wants to talk to me just now and this was my life. Or half of it."  
  
"I still don't know how you grew up this way, Nora? Yeah you see it with Nora. And Jillian knows it but you'd not see it with her."  
  
"I didn't want it to be the be-all, end-all of her, I didn't want it for me either. I don't even like calling it hunting, we don't do it like hunting," it was strange to rehash the early years of them now with a daughter and a divorce between them, on opposite sides of the border. "Gamekeeping sounds odd too but it's closer?"  
  
"Caretaking?"  
  
"Aye, that'll do for it. If something happened to someone else that happened to Jillian, it'd be our job to deal with it, it still is, but we're the ones in the area who have to do it. Without us to look into it properly you'll get people who think it's fine to shoot everyone. Little girls. Sophie's daughter Violet. Nora didn't give you their names but they're the ones coming up."  
  
"Nora never thought I understood this but I do get it. That you'll look into it properly. Rationally." It was a hell of a lot of trust Iona was giving her here but perhaps it had been earned. Diana hadn't fought over giving up the weapons and trinkets of a hunting life in the house. Diana had taught Jillian the proper respect for things and still hadn't let her had a gun of her own yet because she wasn't old enough. She hadn't even taken her on a hunt yet because she wasn't old enough to choose. They'd agreed. They'd agreed on all those things the way they were supposed to with a daughter and a divorce between them. "  
  


* * *

  
  
Violet was eager to get out of the car, bundled in the backseat and complaining of being 'trussed up like a turkey' in a combination of blankets and her seatbelt as Sophie pulled into the drive, gravel crunching beneath the tyres. It was quiet here, tall pines curling about the house and extending up into the hills behind it, a good old sort of hideaway not unlike the pack house only smaller. It made sense for a small family cabin that might've been a bothy back in the day as she turned the engine off and got her and her daughter out of the car, Nora coming down the steps to meet them.  
  
"Thanks for coming, here let me grab that." Nora was pale; bruised under the bloodshot eyes but still gave her a strong one-armed hug as she shouldered a couple of bags Sophie handed over gratefully as she got Violet out. "And you must be Violet, how're you feeling?"  
  
"Sore." Violet's eyes darted between the two of them as she tucked the blanket tighter between the two of them and then shivered hard enough her teeth chattered. "Getting the rest of the silver out was worse than the bullet."  
  
"Prevention's better than cure." Nora said and clapped a hand over her mouth as she led the way inside. "And I sound like my dad, an Arran jumper and the transformation'll be complete."  
  
"Didn't your dad have a beard?" Sophie asked, trying to remember which one was which. There weren't enough photos on the walls here – which made sense when she knew what the place tended to be used for - as she took off her jacket to hang it up, closing the door behind Violet. "You'll have your work cut out for you."  
  
"Dad had some muttonchops, it was our uncle that had the beard until he got it caught in some barbed wire and had to cut it out and off but that'll happen if you're all off out on the sloe gin."   
  
It wasn't Nora who said it but another woman, taller, slighter at the shoulders but broader at the hips with the same greyness of exhaustion about her face that Sophie had seen in her own every time she checked in the rear-view for Violet the whole drive here. This had to be Diana: there might be grey threading the auburn hair at the temples but they had the same Roman noses, the same set of jaw, undeniably sisters.  
  
"Thanks for inviting us," Sophie said as she extended a hand, "I'm Sophie, this is Violet."  
  
"Thank you for coming, we're out of our depth and I'll not turn away help, it's good to finally meet more of Nora's friends." She had a firm grip for Sophie and a hand that settled on Violet's shoulder. "I am so sorry you had to go through that, we're going to do what we can here to find out who did that to you, it never should have happened at all."  
  
Violet blinked, stumbling through a thank you with cheeks that had gone pink under that sincere intensity radiating off Diana.   
  
"We've tea on, got some goodies – Violet what do you fancy?" Nora popped back from wherever she'd put the bag she'd had and grinned at whatever she was seeing, pulling Sophie back into the present.  
  
"Tea sounds great, Vi?"  
  
"Um…just some juice, I think I need to take some painkillers soon." Sophie agreed with her daughter there. She was wobbling and her colour had gone again, that sour smell coming off her that suggested she was starting to struggle.  
  
"Right come through, come through, leave everything there I'll take it upstairs in a bit." Nora waved them on and Diana smiled, gesturing for them to go ahead as Sophie sent Violet on ahead of her, a hand on her back.  
  
"How's your girl?" She asked as quietly as she could, not sure she wanted Violet to hear just yet.  
  
"Up and down. Physically she's through the worst of it or she will be, there's nothing too nasty at present and we're waiting for a few more tests but hopefully they won't show anything up but I know she's not talking about what's going on in her head and I have no idea how to reach her."  
  
"None of them take to it easily, the few anyone says that do? They're good liars or they're deep enough in shock to cover it. She'll have the stages to go through." Sophie didn't need to help Violet sit, Nora was already doing it for her and she wondered at where Jillian was, if she'd be joining them now or later as she took a seat. "You're giving me a look."  
  
"Sorry I don't know what to think, stages to go through? Infection?"  
  
"Grief." That was Violet who had her hands wrapped around a glass. "Thanks."  
  
"Grief." Diana echoed, sitting heavily enough Sophie was worried she was going into shock right there and then, she definitely had the look about her for it.  
  
"Think about it this way: she had her life that she knew and that life isn't going to be the same way it was before, it just won't, most of it will, she can be herself but she'll be doing it as a werewolf, not a human. And that's something she'll be coming to terms with. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Now denial she's probably not going to go through," Sophie took her tea as Nora sat down with them, milk, sugar and everything else laid out but she ignored it in favour of allowing the mug to warm her hands as she spoke. "She knows werewolves are real, she knows she was bitten, she knows what happens. It's the other stages. There's honestly not a lot of bargaining that gets done with this that I've seen, not with cases like this where people know but she  _is_  young so we need to watch for it, support her."  
  
Diana was nodding, Nora too, both good signs that they were listening to her as Violet sipped at her juice and reached for the biscuits on the plate in front of her, crunching as quietly as she could. She had more expertise here than either of the remaining adults but Sophie wouldn't be surprised if she stayed quiet after what she'd been through.  
  
"What's she like when she's angry?"  
  
"The usual: stomping about in a huff, screaming and shouting or the silent treatment. Bottling it up until the cork bursts is what I'm worried about but at the same time, if I push her then am I doing more harm than good? If she's not ready to talk then she'll resent me trying to get her to talk."  
  
"Maybe she has to be angry at you though," Violet said quietly, Diana and Nora's heads both snapping her way. "I mean, you're there. She has to be angry at  _someone_  even if it's not fair right now, she'll not mean it, she just has to have someone to shout at. Or take it out at. If it gets bad then yeah, you say that but if she can't be angry because you're worried about it then that's not fair for her either. Make sure she apologises properly after. For the right reasons.  _I'll_  do that. I'll talk to her about it."  
  
Sophie didn't forget she was proud of her daughter but there were times that her pride kindled fiercely in her chest, moments like this when she looked and wondered how grown-up she was, even sat bundled in a blanket, still stitched and surely smarting from a gunshot inflicted by someone with a vendetta in a stranger's house. That she'd raised her well enough to be confident enough to speak her mind that way that she didn't flinch when Diana reached a hand across the table to squeeze it, swallowing loud enough for Sophie to hear it.  
  
" _Thank you_."  
  
"You probably won't say that when she's losing her temper…"  
  
"I've had her talking around everything and nothing. I want my girl sounding like my girl again because she still is."  
  
"I'll be the one to ask it," Nora said with a grim look of resignation, "How bad does the depression get?"  
  
"Worst case? People do kill themselves. People can't cope with what's happened, with a change of that scale and that ranges from people who had no idea werewolves existed to people who did, people with and without families and support networks. We do what we can but you can't help everyone, you just can't and it's terrible, it doesn't get easier to lose anyone when you've reached out and offered them all that you can think to offer them; they have to want it too, sometimes they don't. The best cases are when they  _do_  know, when they  _do_  have a more accepting attitude towards werewolves, and when they have a support network around them. Jillian has all of that from the sounds of it. I'm not telling you this to scare you but I'm not going to let you go into this without knowing all of the risks involved. Sometimes…"  
  
"Sometimes you can't help everyone," Diana finished.  
  
A heavy silence fell over them after that, eating and drinking only until Violet got to her feet with the scrape of chair over hardwood, a look of determination on her face.  
  
"Where is the mysterious Jillian?" She asked, looking from Diana to Nora and back again. "She's probably bored of talking to old people all the time. No offense."  
  
"I'll take you, we've got a medical room here, it's sort of a converted old place and where we come if us or someone else needs stitching up, a load of others use it." Nora had a hand at Violet's back, Sophie noticed, enough to support and steer as needed as she and Diana watched them go taking with them chatter about this place versus the pack house, even older people probably in weird old Harris tweed knocking them together with old duffers named Sandy.  
  
"She's a good one you've got there."  
  
"Tried escaping about a day after she got that bullet in her, stitches still fresh and someone goes and leaves her unsupervised and she's trying to Tom Cruise her way out in fuzzy socks."   
  
Diana laughed, the corners of her eyes creasing with it. "If Jillian wasn't drugged to the gills she'd be climbing the walls by now."  
  


* * *

  
  
"So?"  
  
"So?"  
  
Nora had sprung herself at Diana right outside her door after Violet had come back from seeing Jillian and gone to unpack with her mother, the sort of ambush Diana was about ready to lamp her sister for.   
  
"What d'you think?"  
  
"Of  _what_  exactly, Nora? I'm bloody—I'm not in the mood, all right? Whatever it is you're trying to arse around today just don't." Diana clenched her hands into fists. Relaxed them. Did it again. A band had settled across the top of her head that heralded the oncoming headache that she wouldn't get to deal with as she leant back against the wall, shoulders curled forward.  _That won't help that headache, shoulders back, head up_ , a voice in her head told her, an annoying know-it-all sort that sounded everything and nothing like her mother.  
  
(She had no time for the hurt that flashed across Nora's face either. Nora could shoulder her own hurt without foolishly adding to it. She wasn't a child anymore. Two children were under the roof now, both of them hurting and expecting adults to damn well be adults about this despite appearances.)  
  
Nora took a short, sharp breath. Pursed her lips the way she did when she was in one of her grumpier moods that veered into pissed off and taking everyone with her. "I was going to ask what you thought of them but what's the point, you'll be a cow about it," she snapped, turning to leave until Diana grabbed her by the elbow hard enough that it had to hurt when Nora resisted, tripping over her feet.  
  
"Listen to me: I can't have you singing off a different hymn book right now. I am  _sorry_  if I'm struggling right now but I'm at the end of my rope and I don't know what way's up, what way's down. I can't do all your little jokes and nudge-nudge, wink-wink shite at the moment. I can't. I have the skin of my teeth and that's it." If they were having to be honest about all of this then Nora would get it and be happy about it as Diana let go of her, folding her arms with her hands tucked up under her armpits, stifling the opportunity.  
  
There wasn't an apology out of Nora. Diana could probably count them on one hand and hers hadn't been one either, Nora would know it for the explanation that it was instead same as when they'd been younger and one would skelp the other round the head with a Barbie then ten minutes later carry on as if nothing had happened. Not that it had ever stopped Nora from sulking. Might be a younger sibling thing, Diana wouldn't know about that after all.  
  
"Fine. Right." When silence wasn't going to get her way, Nora relented though not without a show of rubbing her arm as Diana rolled her eye. "Piss off you're an ox."  
  
"All that because you're worried I won't like your wee pal."  
  
"'My wee pal'? Get tae—It's not primary school?"  
  
"Could've fooled me Nora."  
  
It wasn't funny, even the outraged look on Nora's face wasn't funny but it was at the same time. It had to be because Diana was laughing, choking on it as the floor rushed up to meet her, a struggle to catch her breath. She couldn't see either and she was distantly aware of the stairs creaking because it was that sort of project everyone older than them had put off and her and Nora had put off and Jillian would put off until the stairs finally caved in and someone got lodged in the collapsed wood and carpet, forcing the issue. And that just set her off worse, violent hiccupping breaths that kept getting stuck until there was silence and the shrieking gasp of her inhale when it came, burning her throat.  
  
Nora's face swam into view, ghostly, pallid and haunted as she tried to pull Diana to her with hushing noises and Nora had grown a third arm—  
  
Time had stretched itself out because she came to in a darker hall, Nora sat next to her even if Nora's knees would protest it worse than Diana's since she never heard the end of it, how come Diana was older and  _her_  knees didn't pop loud enough to scare small children when she got up? Sophie was crouched in front of her, a hand on her shoulder, urging her to slow her breathing, to listen and Diana managed. Steady counts of three as she woke up from wherever she'd been, the bubble well and truly burst. Her face hot and itchy, throat well and truly sandpapered, head thumping.  
  
"This is shit," she managed succinctly.   
  
"Yep," Sophie agreed as Nora tugged Diana over so she could kiss the top of her head. "It's shit. It stops being shit, eventually, but for a while it's just shit. And you have to keep stepping in it. Until the day you're out of it."  
  
"God that's a fucking word picture right there," Nora muttered and Diana choked on a watery laugh that got caught in her throat until Nora patted her back until she could breathe again.  
  
"Can you get me some water Nora?"  
  
"You sure?"  
  
"Yeah, I just need a minute here."  
  
"Right, back in a minute." Nora planted a hand on Diana's shoulder to get herself up, both knees popping. "I need some WD-forty on these," she complained as she hobbled her way off to the kitchen.  
  
It left Diana alone with Sophie who sat where her sister had been sitting only a moment ago, an arm about her shoulder without hesitating, firm circles rubbed on her collarbone that encouraged her to keep breathing slow and deep and steady until her head cleared.  
  
"I wanted to say thanks for being here, what with what happened to your Violet and I get it, I don't know how you're in a fit state to come here and see—" She waved the hand that she could so she didn't hit Sophie, dropping it back to her side heavily.   
  
"I'm not. I am then I'm not, having something to do, that's going to help. You've got your sister with you, that's good. Me? I had the whole pack around and I love all of them, I do, I honestly and truly do but they'd drive me up the wall with their hovering." She sighed, Diana's hair lifting with it and leant back against the wall. "And I can't drag them all into it any more than you could bring more folk into it."  
  
"Well you've met Nora; if I don't watch this'll burn her instead of eat her."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
There was more Diana wanted to say but Nora was coming back, a creak of a floorboard giving her away and Sophie moved taking her warmth with her and Diana planted both hands flat on the floor either side to stop herself from leaning her way until she didn't, glad for the warmth and support and someone who seemed to know what they were doing here.


	3. Chapter 3

"We were here." Sophie pushed a red pin into the map Diana had spread across a table they'd dragged into the sitting room, five of them gathered about for the first time outside sharing meals. Even Jillian had been coaxed out by the novelty of company where she wasn't the sole topic of conversation, something that Diana been a kick in the teeth for Diana  _why couldn't you do that?_  she'd asked herself at first until she'd had to let it go. You couldn't be all things to all people. The thought rose again now though and she gave herself a shake; Sophie was still talking, Diana's gaze dropping to hands spread out over the map. "Not far from Drymen. The Trossachs is our bit, more or less, overlaps with a few others but it's big enough, no one squabbles except some of the lads and that's noise more than anything else. It's ancestral. Easy enough for most to get to when they need to."  
  
Diana nodded, pushing her hair out of her face when it fell forward to grab a blue pin to press that in. "We were out by Luss…no. That's—no that not's a coincidence. Can't be."  
  
"It's, what, decent half hour depending on traffic?" Nora asked from where she stood at the long side of the table between Diana and Sophie who were at either end, the girls across from her. "So what's the thinking then if a werewolf attacks a hunter and a hunter attacks a werewolf less than twenty miles down the road from one another? Can one of you hand me—Cheers!" Catching the ball of twine Violet tossed her way in one hand, Nora made short work of unravelling a length of it to join the pins together, biting the end off before dropping it down to the table. "Thoughts?"  
  
"Nora we've scissors you clarty…" Diana didn't bother finishing the thought. If she could do it with her teeth, Nora would use her teeth and find herself with a rare pair of falsers before she hit sixty for all she put them through.   
  
Nora didn't just beam at her. She snapped her teeth. Jillian stifled a laugh, badly, the sort of wheezing noise escaping out her nose that put Diana in mind of old Saturday cartoons she knew her daughter had never seen.  
  
"Are we going for the obvious here of someone with a grudge or is that  _too_  obvious?" Sophie asked as she took the twine to map out what would be a hunting ground or something like it, she didn't know the exact terms all werewolves used these days for it, before handing it to Diana for to do the same, examining the eventual overlap.  
  
"I don't think we rule out anything at this stage," Diana replied, taking another pin to set in the overlap between circles they'd drawn with a sigh. "So. We put grudge a bit further down the list and start with this one instead: do they know each other?"  
  
"I think," Jillian spoke up as she spanned the overlap of the two circles with her fingers, taking a deep breath, "I think they'd have to be clumsy, stupid, and have some sort of weird fantastical magical luck that doesn't happen in real life  _not_  to know each other the way it worked out."   
  
It was a good sign Jillian was getting involved, Diana thought, and she smiled back encouragingly when her daughter glanced up for a look of approval even with her brow furrowed as she thought the whole thing through. Diana didn't miss how quickly that disappeared at the grin that passed between her and Violet that reminded her of trading theories with Nora, when they'd gotten something right or close enough in front of their parents when they'd been younger. It'd be good for her to have a friend who understood all of this, Violet someone as easy to like as her mother. And they'd both be stuck recovering a while longer, an unusual summer holiday to lie about as it was so at least they could come up with a decent cover together  _and_  have fun at the same time. Her and Nora had been the two who'd gotten into knocking about with a bottle of Buckie or cider, tramping through hedges, eaten alive by midges, trying not to come home sick and stinking for lack of anything to do.  
  
They were learning. They weren't in trouble or looking for it. Trouble had come looking for them, mind, but she'd tried listening to some podcast bollocks Nora had foisted on her, all soothing voices – American lassies with the sort of vocal fry that had Diana clearing her throat for them every few minutes – about grief and acceptance mental health (which were all well and good, she wasn't knocking that, Christ knows growing up with some of their lot they could've done with talking about it) but why she'd thought  _that_  was what Diana needed was beyond her. She'd wanted her bed. And to try catching up on Line of Duty because when wasn't she behind with Line of Duty?  
  
"Do other hunters and werewolves work together at all?" Violet asked, scooting her chair closer to the table since she still had to sit down more often than not as evidenced by yesterday's almost Victorian-esque swooning when she'd gotten light-headed. "I wanted to ask before but if there's to people, right, and it's probably going to be them working together then is it a common thing? It's a bit off-topic, I know but sort of not really and you two aren't hunter-hunters?"  
  
"We are," Diana said before Nora could cut in, unable to miss Sophie staring at her the moment she said it but there was no taking it back. "I'm not going to stand here and lie to either of you and say that we don't hunt because we do. If there are people that are dangerous then we'll do what we can before we have to take that final step because there's no taking it back, and there are people who are scared, who are hurting, who don't know what they're doing because they don't have anyone to help them and that's overwhelming. You can't say 'that's a monster, kill it' because they don't understand. Yes, they've done whatever they've done but they need to get help and that's our responsibility to help them find it."  
  
"Not everyone wants help though," Nora added softly, eyes on the table, shoulders curling forward a fraction. "You can't help someone who doesn't want it."  
  
"And there's always a few who do know what they are and go mad with it," Sophie murmured, more disgusted than anything else, mouth curling.  
  
"It's the same for us. Everyone is different. It used to be lawless as far back as we can tell but if you get to a few hundred years ago then the rules came into it, the codes started to get formalised and written down for folk to abide by. Families have their traditions but time'll erode that too. I mean, like your mum said, you'll always have some bad eggs, everyone's got that aunt or uncle that votes Tory and gets misty-eyed over Maggie Thatcher. Some are strict about upholding the rules and interpreting them. Some aren't. The world changes, we understand things better, we have to look at how it was all written down with what they knew then versus what we know now…" She huffed a laugh and took a deep breath, dragging a hand back through her hair; this was what she'd told Iona once, back in the early days of their marriage and giving more or less the same speech now, to a new friend of their daughter, in front her and Iona's daughter,  _after_  Iona had visited? It was fitting, in an odd sort of way. Or maybe that was how Diana's life worked now. "We used to think it was all curses, witchcraft, demons, possession. We know how wrong we were now but some hunters become hunters to hunt, they're not going to care, and you can explain all of it until you're blue in the face, they'll still go grab a rifle."  
  
"What Diana's trying to say in the most long winded way in the world because she's got the lungs of champion piper," Nora continued, pulling a face even if her voice was quiet but no less firm than Diana's had been, "is that we can't speak for everyone but that we were brought up to see people, not targets. Your mum, everyone else you grew up with? They can't speak for all werewolves can't they?"  
  
"No," Violet said quietly, not looking at anyone.  
  
"It just makes this…It doesn't narrow it down and it doesn't open it up. It's something we keep in mind." Sophie drew a neat line under it, opening the laptop set on the table to help them get back on track, something Diana was grateful for. Jillian had to listen to this, had to hear it, but that didn't make it any easier for Diana to have her hear it, selfish as that was. "Theories: two completely separate attacks, at the same time, on two girls, no connections at all between the attackers is the wildcard option. Two attacks where the attackers know each other is our working theory and we go from there."  
  
No one around the table seemed inclined to play Devil's Advocate as Sophie tapped away, Nora scribbling away in her battered old notepad that she took everywhere as Diana looked away from the map. "Two attackers then, how does that play out? We need to figure out how well they know each other. The relationship they have. Why they'd go after Jillian and Violet. If they know anything about us. Or is it just the one of the pair that knows. Do we know them?"  
"If a werewolf was working with a hunter who'd automatically shoot someone, a werewolf that goes straight to biting then you'd have to think that the idea was that both the girls would die. Or that was their preferred outcome." Sophie shot an apologetic look at Jillian who smiled tightly, nodding back at her, one hand going for the covered bite, still livid beneath her sleeve.   
  
"Unless…" Violet pushed herself up, Jillian reaching a hand out to help her balance when she wobbled, "so, like, what if they wanted to kill a werewolf and upset a whole pack of werewolves because that probably happens if you hurt or kill someone's kid? Everyone was at the house after they found out but that'd be too much for one hunter, right?"  
  
"It…it depends." Nora shifted, uncomfortable to say it as anyone was to hear it. But they had to be honest. No one would move forward if they weren't and the girls, more than anyone, were owed that. "Some of them go all out, they're those doomsday prepper types, they'd not do it in any honourable sort of way but if you asked them they'd say it's not about honour, it's eradication, give it all of that."  
  
"Right." Violet's mouth went tight.  
  
"You all right?" Sophie asked softly, reaching for her daughter's shoulder, waiting for the nod.   
  
"So, like, what if they wanted to upset a whole pack of werewolves for some other reason then? Because then they've got a reason if that's too much for one person or one werewolf?" Violet continued before she looked over to Jillian who took a deep shuddering breath.   
  
"We were talking about some stuff, before when it was just us chatting about me and…right—well," she took another breath, licking her lips as she fidgeted with the edge of her sleeve. "What if it did something to keep that werewolf on side? Maybe it wasn't their big thing but—I didn't want to be one, I didn't it was—that doesn't matter just now, but if they  _did_  do something then that'd be a good argument. Maybe."  
  
"They'd have an idea who else to keep track of, or it'd confirm anyone they didn't already know." Nora said at length when she realised that Diana wasn't going to say anything,  _couldn't_  say anything. There was a cold quiet horror in her sister's voice, her lips a thin pale line but it seemed so far away as Diana gripped the table tight to hold herself up until Sophie's hand reached for hers, a brief but welcome squeeze that grounded her.   
  
 _You're all right_ , she mouthed. Smiled a fraction.   
  
 _Later_ , Diana mouthed back.   
  
"Was turning a hunter part of their idea when you were brainstorming?" Sophie asked. Diana was curious too, as to this line of thinking when it came from a werewolf, and from someone ages with her daughter.  
  
Taking a seat, Violet nodded to Jillian. "We talked about it."   
  
"Right, so," Jillian reached for the map and the old travel sweets tin where the pins lived in, then past it for a pencil to spin between her fingers. "We decided that turning a hunter wasn't any factor of it. Turning anyone? Not part of it. I don't think they intended on us surviving. I mean—maybe they thought we would and they might have a plan for it, they probably do, but they would've preferred that we didn't. It's dramatic. I'm someone's daughter. That gets people involved. People won't think right if it's their child or a child they know will they?"  
  
"And it gives people more of a reason to get involved: other hunters would pick up their guns or, like with me, the whole pack rallies round."  
  
Nora's deep groan had all heads turning her direction, brows lifted. "We need to think about other possibilities in that case. Sophie and I having crossed paths before; Diana you  _know_  how some of them are if you think about helping one of  _them_ ," there was disgust loaded into her voice, familiar to the adults, perhaps to Violet, the opposite of what Diana and Nora had tried to instil in Jillian. "And which one of them knows. I mean, hunter seems more likely than the werewolf right?"  
  
Diana didn't hear her.   
  
Jillian was the one being discussed. Dissected. Cracked open—  
  
Nora was still talking and Diana forced herself to listen when Jillian pulled a face at her. She'd been caught staring, that'd be a conversation later, or an argument later. Hopefully not the silent treatment.  
  
"-start making lists, cross people off."  
  
"Start with ruling out any known elements first then?" Sophie offered. "That way we can focus ourselves or at least maybe make a few calls."  
  
"We need to consider it not being an equal partnership too, someone using someone else and having them under the thumb." It was looking at the map that had Diana putting forth the idea, the islands sat in Loch Lomond, Inchmurrin and Inchlonaig with their sordid and ugly histories of the old mental asylum and where the unwed mothers were sent on one, the alcoholics and mentally ill confined on the other. Islands in the midst of the overlap. "That makes things trickier if that's the case."  
  
"It's the hunter calling the shots then. They've more to gain from it though how you keep a werewolf under the thumb…" Sophie sighed then shut the laptop. "We can think about it, we've gotten through more than I think any of us thought we would at the start of this. I know I've got a list to go through on my phone, a few at risk folk but I'll need to check the description against them and have – who was it who came down that night?"  
  
"Erin." Nora, Diana, and Jillian all answered together, everyone laughing.   
  
"Right, Erin. D'you think she'd be able to come back down?"  
  
"Don't see why not," Nora replied, barely bothering to look up from where she was scribbling frantically.  
  
"Will seeing the bite again help? I know it's healed more but they do bite-mark things don't they?" Jillian offered and Diana was proud, insufferably proud of her.   
  
Sophie smiled at her, warm and maternal. "If you don't mind and you're sure, it might help us. It's the same as a dental record. I mean we don't keep those for how we are as wolves but we could figure out if it's male or female, old or young, if they're missing a tooth, if there's damage. Anything like that."  
  
"We'll have our list of usual suspects too; Diana you can take all the ones with a grudge against me personally."  
  
"So that'll be what, seventy, eighty per cent of that list?" Nora scrunched up her eyes, the full shit-eating grunt. "Fine, well you'll be the one ringing mam and the old man, do the rounds with all their old cronies, see what the corpses shake out."  
  
"I can message my friends, see if anyone's stupid enough to brag about it." Violet offered. There was a little mutter of 'same'. Diana envied them, just a little, too many hunters preferred to stay old school as if it'd suddenly out them to the world to try keeping in touch with even mobile phones   
  
"I'll message some friends in case it's someone stupid and bragging about it," Violet offered, right as Jillian said 'same' and well, lucky them for being the age where they'd get more done quicker than some of what the next few days would involve with painstaking rounds of phone calls back and forth, chasing up some of the characters creeping around in the woodwork.  
  
"It's a solid start for now, I think we'll all take a break, get something to eat and drink then come back in a bit, agreed?"  
  
Diana heard no complaints and took it as a win. She'd few enough of those and she had the feeling the complaints would be mounting in the days to come.  
  


* * *

  
  
The thing about sleeping in someone else's house was twofold: you heard everything and you crept about so you weren't the one making the noise in an unfamiliar place. Or that was Sophie's line of thinking on the matter as she crept downstairs somewhere past two in the morning, cold enough to wrap the blanket from the end of the bed around her shoulders and keep it there even in the kitchen, bare toes curling as if to get away from the frozen floor beneath them. She should've put her socks on but that would've meant turning a light on to stop herself from fumbling in the dark, making more noise than she might've. And turning on the bedroom light had seemed like an effort at the time when she'd known the way out the door and down the stairs by touch. There was a light on in the kitchen though that had her squinting from the doorway, tears clinging to her eyelashes, blinking them away as she made out the hazy shape of a person sat at the table.  
  
"Shouldn't you be in bed?"  
  
It wasn't Violet sat at the table. Violet would've answered back instead of jumping to face her, guilt writ large on her face because it was Jillian, wrapped up her own blanket, hair half tucked in, half out, sleep mussed and pale under the fluorescent lighting she still looked a hundred times healthier than she had when they'd first met.   
  
"I'm not tired." Unsurprisingly, Jillian yawned as soon as she said it, Sophie hiding a laugh on the way to investigate the cupboards she was starting to get used to. Or so she thought. Breakfast cereals stared back at her. "Cups are in the middle bit of the tall cupboard, the one above the kettle has the tea and coffee, everything else."  
  
"Cheers."  
  
Hunting down something that had a chamomile smell to it that'd hopefully be lacking in caffeine too since she planned on going back to bed at some point too, she puttered around the kitchen while the kettle boiled, sitting across from Jillian once the tea was steeping in the cup. It was more earthy now. Too dark to tell what it was for certain.   
  
"Are you going to grass me up to mum and Nora?"  
  
"I'm no a grass." The reply came automatically, engrained in her as it was so many of them and it got a laugh out of Jillian. "It's not a crime, sitting up in a kitchen. You're not doing anything dodgy are you? Do I get to ask why you're up?"  
  
"Couldn't sleep. You?"  
  
"I woke up, I heard something. Or I thought I did," she blew on the tea to cool it, removing the tea bag and got up to dump it in the sink as she continued, "it's been happening on and off since Violet was shot. Happened back after I got poisoned with wolfsbane."  
  
"Did it go away?" Jillian asked, hunkering down in the blanket more until her mouth disappeared beneath it.  
  
"It did. I had people to help. Rest of the pack, family. Support and all that good stuff they're probably talking to you about." Not that Sophie hadn't but there was always the danger of doing too much when you weren't part of it as she wrapped her hands around the cup, watching Jillian carefully as she tried and failed not to fidget.   
  
"I'll have to talk about it. About what happened." One hand crept out of the blanket, fingers tap-tap-tapping on the table, feet doing the same on the crossbar at her feet.  
  
"You've been doing that," Sophie pointed out. "You did that today with all of us." Sophie had been privy to some of what Diana and Nora hadn't but compared to whatever Jillian and Violet had talked about together, alone, it dimmed in comparison. She'd been  _talking_. That was the important part, and even bleary-eyed in the small hours she didn't want to let Jillian lose sight of that accomplishment.  
  
"Not—well I have right, fine, okay I have because you and Violet said it was important and that I'd feel better if I did and maybe I do. Or I will. But there's things I'll have to say won't I? Or it'll be—it's mum. She gets this  _look_ ," the word was punctuated with a short, sharp sigh, "where she thinks it's all her fault and it's not and I can't talk to her about all of that. And after today, too, it's like…I remembered it more. And I have to if we want to stop this happening again but—"  
  
As Jillian's shoulders drew up and up and up, as her words came faster, Sophie held up a hand to stop her. "One thing at a time. First thing: is it your mum's fault?"  
  
Jillian wasn't looking at her, instead she was picking at her blanket and chewing at her lip but it was just the two of them in the kitchen, Sophie content to wait for an answer without pushing for as long as it took as she sipped her tea. It could've used some honey or sugar to mask the muddy aftertaste but she wasn't about to get up again for that. Finally, when she was about to give up on getting an answer, Jillian relented with one word: "Maybe."  
  
It was a loaded answer and both of them froze at a creak above their heads but it was the house settling, no further sounds coming after several heartbeats as the silence stretched between them. Sophie sipped her tea, Jillian worried her lip raw until Sophie reached a hand out to stop her but that was when the words came spilling out instead.   
  
"Mum – other mum – isn't one of us. See I don't even know what I am now, I mean it's wild, isn't it?" She sniffed, the blanket no longer muffling her mouth as she drew herself up again in her seat. "I should know what I am and I don't. Or I do but if I say it then it's--  _anyway_. Um, mum wasn't one of us. Isn't. She's a lawyer and there was a  _thing_  before they had me, no hunting stuff in the house 'cept some books, bits and pieces. Nothing dangerous right?" She dragged out the word dangerous the way only a teenager could exaggerate anything, the way that Sophie missed being that age in the oddest of ways. "But it was there. In the house. Around. It was how I grew up and I guess it's how you grew up? It wasn't shoved down my throat or anything. Mum still gets tight about it sometimes though and aunt Nora doesn't get it when you try to talk them up about gran and grandpa bringing  _them_  up so who knows.  
  
"But there was a thing when they split up and I stayed here because I wasn't going to go to London and I don't think either of them wanted me to go there either, not really." Jillian sniffed and Sophie took a hasty gulp of tea she almost choked on; Diana's family history being divulged wasn't what she'd been expected when this had started off and here she was now, sat opposite her daughter in a borrowed blanket, the secrets spilling out with no end in sight. "Now I can't stop myself from thinking about what if you'd gone, this wouldn't have happened and that's so stupid or if she hadn't been what she was, if she'd given it up, if it had all been out of the house—it's what we said today, isn't it? That might be one of the reasons and I was so  _angry_."  
  
Sophie swallowed her sigh because that wouldn't help and neither would any of the immediate responses that always sounded better in your head and patronising at best the instant they left your mouth, instead rounding the table as soon as Jillian's face crumpled despite her best clumsy efforts to hide it behind both hands balled up in the blanket. There was no fight when she pulled the girl close, just a body that shook, sobbing fitfully as she collapsed into Sophie's arms, shuddering through it as she rubbed circles on her back, low soothing noises and reminders to breathe until the worst had passed.  
  
"It might not be her fault. We don't know why you were bitten yet. When it comes down to it, the people at fault at the people who decided to pick the two of you. But you get to decide how you feel about all of that. I don't know much about how she brought you, only what you've told me now but I don't think she would've meant or wanted this for you, or your aunt. But that doesn't mean you're not allowed to blame someone. She's there. You can put a face to it. You don't need to feel guilty about that just now. Just. Be aware of it. Try talking to her."  
  
"I know all of that." A wet gasp came from the side of Sophie's neck as she used the edge of the blanket to gently wipe Jillian's red face. "I don't know why I'm so  _angry_."  
  
"You were attacked. That's normal. It's part of all this. That other part? The part about not knowing what you are now? You get to be angry about that because that's changed in a very real, very huge way. You're not the same anymore and anger is natural there, I'd be angry. You remember Violet and I talking about other people in your situation and how it's grieving?" Jillian nodded, just about, so Sophie continued, ignoring the pain in her knees against the cold hard floor as she patted the girl's back to help her breathing even out. "Anger is easy. It's this big tough shell. Being loud or snappy so people back off and leave you alone, you get to hurt other people the way you got hurt or sometimes you just like to think about hurting them. It's appealing. Only it doesn't get you far. It'll eat a great big hole in you. In all the people around you. It'll hurt you just as much as the thing that hurt you first and give that thing power too."  
  
"But what about the  _other_  other bit?"  
  
"You're still you. It might not feel like it but what makes you who you are? Did you stop liking your favourite food or your favourite thing on TV because you're a werewolf now?"  
  
Sullenly – some things, it seemed, didn't stop a teenager from being a teenager – Jillian shook her head.   
  
"So you're still Jillian. Just a bit different now. An adjustment period. That's why it's a process where you talk to people like your mum—"  
  
"If I tell her any of this she'll be  _devastated_!" Jillian interrupted, not looking or sounding much better off, her expression stricken as she leant away from Sophie. "Nora too, she might be worse, she's mad as a brush sometimes."  
  
"You matter most to them right now. You getting better is number one to both of them and you getting better means that they get better but that doesn't happen if people aren't honest. Things'll fester away. They'll be able to handle things. Because they love you."  
  
"I don't know." Jillian's face crumpled again and she wiped her nose with the back of her hand, sniffling.  
  
Rising from the floor to take the seat next to her when her knees protested too much for her to ignore, Sophie set a hand on Jillian's shoulder to draw her close. "Listen to me, Jillian, really listen: don't let it swallow you or you'll end up in a hole you can't get out of and we'll not be able to get you out of either."  
  
"You've seen people like that." It wasn't a question, too flat at the end for it to be one.  
  
"More times than I care to count," Sophie admitted because Jillian deserved the truth. And who knew, maybe it'd help with the investigation they were in the stages of because the girls had come up with theories just as good as the rest of them.  
  
"Violet said it gets better. That people who aren't like you and her get to be normal. Sorry that's rude, I'm not saying you're not normal but…you know what I mean."  
  
"I do, you're all right I'm not offended. It's a different normal. New normal. You'll adjust like I said. Right now it's fresh and raw, eventually it'll scab over and you'll not even notice it. I'll do my best to help get you there, I promise you that."  
  
With a nod, Jillian tucked herself into her blanket again, drawing her feet up into the seat of chair beneath it, snug as a bug but not looking noticeably happier for it. Sophie couldn't blame her. Slow baby steps with all of this. She sipped her tea until it was done, Jillian's eyes drooping after she'd rinsed it in the sink, the girl's chin swinging down to her chest.  
  
Jillian nodded, tucking herself up in the blanket again with her feet drawn up onto the seat of the chair with her, snug as a bug but looking no happier for it. Slow steps. Baby steps. Sophie sipped her tea until it was done and waited it out until Jillian's eyes drooped, chin swinging down to her chest.  
  
"Right you, time for bed; it'll be a hundred times worse with no sleep."  
  
There was no fighting as Sophie helped Jillian tiptoe up the stairs and to her room before she retreated to her own, listening to the quiet of the house before it was disturbed by a door opening and closing, Violet's voice then Jillian's. She smiled to herself then decided to try taking her own advice, staring at the ceiling until it blurred before her and she drifted back into nothingness.


	4. Chapter 4

It had been a coping mechanism of their mother's and her mother's and probably her mother's too, some unbroken line of women and an ancient tradition stretching back to time immemorial that Diana wasn't about to examine when she was elbow deep in getting the dinner on with the potatoes bobbing about in the sink, peels coiled up on the chopping board next to it, her fingers still numb from the cold. The telly was on in the next room, whatever the girls had on as they ploughed their way through a Netflix queue in their shared convalescence that mysteriously only struck them now when there was something that they  _could_  help with but that seemed to hold little interest for them. Diana shouldn't care. They were on the mend. Neither of them had had much interest in various aspects of getting well until they'd found a  _wee pal_  as Nora put it when she was laying it on thick to try winding them up but there were times she'd gotten used to someone else helping out around the kitchen. Nora was worse than useless; for someone who had knife skills elsewhere, they'd never transferred into the realm of the kitchen.  
  
Diana supposed she could shout for Jillian to come give her a hand.  _But you're afraid_  she thought to herself as she turned the volume up on her phone as the soundtrack in the next room began to swell, drowning out whatever she wasn't listening to.  _You don't want a fight even if that's normal and that's what you're meant to be getting back to. Or you don't want to have a mother-daughter fight in front of guests. Which is also a normal thing that happens._  Jillian was talking. Jillian was laughing. Fine, she'd come down to breakfast yawning with great big bags under her eyes that she hadn't wanted to talk about as she'd shovelled cereal into her mouth so much the better to stop anyone from making conversation with her but it was a far cry from the first days.  
  
 _Stop turning into your mother_ , she scolded herself but that wasn't really fair because her mother had managed to raise her and Nora so she might've weathered this better if either of them had told her about it. Nora would get that joy, maybe, if their mother didn't already know once she started ringing round them to find out what happened but there were only so many conversations you could face and the idea of her parents descending on them and fussing over everything was enough to have her skin crawling as she got to work again, fingers protesting with pins and needles rushing through them.  
  
"Those two'll go deaf at that rate, what a racket, it's all—I'm turning into my old man talking like that." Sophie swung herself around the door with a shake of the head, Diana laughing. "I was about to go have a look but I don't know if I can bring myself to."  
  
"I'm sure you'll get the gist of it over tea."  
  
" _Christ_  the last one I got wasn't even a superhero one it was—I think there were robots and body changing or downloading into new people and time travel maybe? Anyway, d'you want a hand? Doesn't feel right to have you slaving away over a hot stove with the rest of us lazing about."  
  
"I wouldn't say you were lazing about – weren't you off researching?" Diana turned now she was done with the neeps since the last thing she needed was risking hacking a finger off dealing with them and there was Sophie, who— well she wasn't any less easy on the eye now than she'd been before, but maybe Diana wasn't as exhausted, or Sophie or both of them.  
  
The difference a plan of action and a few decent nights sleep made couldn't ever be discounted.   
  
Even with her brown hair scraped back off her face in a messy bun in a pair of old looking jeans that had seen better days, her sleeves rolled up with a similar sort of outdoorsy tan Diana ended up with that cut off where the t-shirt hit, the skin pale and white. And Diana was staring.   
  
"Or—eh were you on the phone?" Diana continued, turning back to the chopping board. "I lost track, how'd it go?"  
  
"Ah everyone's well, Davey was begging to come by but he'd be a pain in the arse and we don't need another person cluttering up the place even if he'd mean well. D'you want me to stick these on to boil?" Sophie nodded at the potatoes in the sink and at the pot Diana had neglected and stuck the water on anyway. "What's for tea anyway?"  
  
"Shepherd's pie but I always stick some neeps in the mash, it's the only way I get the children to eat them."  
  
"I need to try that one."  
  
It was comfortable, having someone else in the kitchen, probably the first person who had any idea what they were doing since Iona (and wasn't that a hell of a thought to be having here and now?) who didn't need directing to do this or that the way Jillian needed or to be told to stop twatting about the way she had to tell Nora who turned into the worst sort of twelve year old at times when unleashed with knives or a chance to practice her juggling skills. Toddlers might have better luck than her sister in that arena. And if it afforded her the chance to get a better look at Sophie now that they weren't in crisis mode then what was the harm? She was only looking. She was allowed to look. And Sophie was there, in old jeans, in a messy bun, working away alongside Diana and ditching the faded green shirt she had on over her t-shirt when the sleeves kept sliding down to leave her in just the t-shirt with a logo worn from too many washes on the front, the sort of arms that suggested she went to the gym and wouldn't Diana like to find out.   
  
"D'you think we're set for heading out soon for a first look?" Sophie asked once they had everything in the oven, the dishes by the sink because the children – Nora included and Diana had laughed to have her sister included in that one – could decide washing and drying between themselves after, both of them at the table that needed set.  
  
Diana took her time considering it. Nora had come into her room last night to pester her about it after all until Diana had thrown a pillow at her face to get her to bugger off; there was burning the midnight oil and then there was Nora who'd down enough coffee to put a hamster on speed to shame, rambling away as Diana considered the pros and cons of smothering her sister. It had been organising a funeral that had won that battle. "Honestly it wouldn't hurt to get out as soon as. The fresher it is in our minds before we start forgetting anything, then so much the better. We're already going to get things mixed up and it's not as if the girls are able to go even if they'd protest if they got wind of that. It's easy enough to get out there any time tomorrow if we wanted."  
  
"Tomorrow's good. And aye, best keep a tight lid on that one for now."  
  
"Better make sure Nora's on board too or she'll get some daft idea in her head and that's all we need."  
  
"You really think she'd go for them being dragged out on the islands?" Sophie raised an eyebrow, sounding doubtful and Diana had to wonder at the side of her sister other people saw but then again, Nora had saved Sophie's life once before. She'd been the one who'd ended up helping to piece part of this together in the first place.  
  
"I love my sister, don't get me wrong, but I think she's up for whatever gets results and that she'd argue it's good for Jillian at the very least since she's no the one nursing a bullet wound. Some therapy shite or something she heard watching too much true crime."  
  
"She talks a good game when she's not blowing smoke out her arse."  
  
Diana laughed at that, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands; that was the onions, all the bloody years and onions still got her to this day. "Can you check that, I'm going to wash my hands again, get the stink off them." Her stomach growled as soon as Sophie opened the oven, nearly bent her double with in on the way to the tap and a third hard scrub with whatever it was she'd picked out on sale last time that was slowly but surely getting the smell off her hands. "You know this is the fastest I've cooked dinner in months? Nora's usually in to pinch something at least, don't know what she's off doing. Making a nuisance of herself to someone."  
  
"She's not trying to be a young thing, I peeked round the door and she wasn't in there with them. She got a mystery bit on the side?"  
  
"Christ she's not even got a side to have a bit on." Was it unkind to laugh? Maybe. But Sophie and Nora were friends and you could slag off your sister when she wasn't about to defend herself. "There's a reason she didn't want some of the folk on the phone pool."  
  
"Ah back in the day that was me," Sophie gave Diana a shove, moving to the kettle with a tip of the head that Diana nodded too. "We were all young weren't we? Before the blood rushed to your head when you stood up too soon and you started making dad noises whenever you lift things."  
  
"I keep threatening Nora with that, Jillian too." Diana laughed as she said it, getting out the mugs then the milk for want of something to do because no, despite the urge to keep puttering about she  _would not_  set the table when there were three other able hands to do it when she shouted. "Jillian says it's either an age thing and you hit a button – and that's pure cheek, so it is, and wrong because I've never heard Iona make a noise like that – then the noises happen or you activate something when you've got weans."  
  
"I've never asked Violet what she thinks about it, I'm sure she's got some wild outlandish theory on the whole thing. Mostly she's horrified about finding out if she'll go grey as a wolf and have arthritis and bad joints, all that."  
  
"If I'd talked to my mam like that I'd've had a good clip round the ear." Or, more likely since Diana and Nora's mother had come from a generation before you stopped smacking your children had brandished the threat of the wooden spoon as required. "Don't tell Nora, she'll pester you."  
  
"She's big enough to take a skelp. Or she can ask my mother. Or my grandmother. Violet's never asked her granny or her great-granny who'd actually know."  
  
"Let me guess: they're the ones who do the spoiling?"  
  
Maybe you didn't normally clink mugs together but what else was there to do by the time Sophie re-joined her at the table (and already they both knew how they liked their tea, but more than that how to make it just right, Diana's co-workers still didn't get it right half the time and she'd been with them for getting on fifteen years by now) and it was comfortable. Wonderfully comfortable to sit in a kitchen with someone who understood. Who could laugh and joke about the normal things even when they were in the midst of some sort of crisis.   
  
 _Shame it's family dinner and tea and you're in a jumper with a hole coming in the sleeve_ , she thought as she took a cautious sip, listening to Sophie talk, watching the freckles – she'd noticed them but not quite had the opportunity to really look at them until now – on the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks as she told a story. She pushed the thought down and away. There were other priorities than her wanting something more now. And who was to say it wasn't because that's what you did when a terrible thing happened? Latched onto a person? But Sophie was—  
  
The oven timer beeping interrupted her thought before she could give it the dignity of thinking too much on it as Diana pushed away from the table, cupping a hand to her mouth.  
  
"Jillian, Violet, Nora! Tea's ready! First one come set the table, other two get the washing up!"  
  
It had the effect she'd desired of unleashing a herd of elephants in the small house as Sophie tossed her the oven gloves with a smile she could only describe as fond; the heat of the oven was the only reason she'd give for her cheeks being red even later when Nora prodded her about the beamer she'd been sporting all through dinner.  
  


* * *

  
  
The fact that it was Sophie's car and not Diana's was the only thing that spared the door from being slammed because that'd be rude and Diana wasn't in the habit of being rude. Well, that wasn't strictly true. She was less in the habit of being rough with another person's things. It was still a near thing, her elbow straining from how hard she jerked the door open and she threw herself into the seat, buckled in, trying and failing the three-five-seven breathing thing that only made her sound like an angry bull about to plough right through the fence, nails sinking through her jeans as she gripped her knees tight.  
  
"You winning there?" Sophie asked, voice full of false cheer from behind the steering wheel as she reversed out the drive, waving to the girls who stood out on the doorstep; apparently this was one of the sort of times where they weren't too old to see them off.  
  
Nora didn't wave them off. Nora stood there with a face like thunder.   
  
Actually, no, Nora had the face of someone who'd not only had her cereal pissed in but had gone to the scran hiding spot to find it empty. Diana would've flipped her off if the girls hadn't been there too but she managed to uncurl a hand and wave. Too much to hope Nora could've pretended to be a grown-up when two of them were off for something like this when the girls were going to be there to pick up on all of it, probably asking questions the whole time too.  
  
"D'you have a sister?" She asked once they were out the drive, waiting for her phone to start going.  
  
"Shockingly, no. I managed to be an only child. Not much I missed out I'm guessing?"  
  
"Not if you ended up with that overgrown child there. She," Diana took another steadying breath, staring straight ahead, "thinks I should've stayed home instead of coming with you today."  
  
"What?" Sophie jerked her head Diana's way and she was glad to hear the shock in her voice. "Why the fu—Look, I like Nora, she's a good laugh like but how many had she had when she threw that one out there?"  
  
Diana laughed, shaking her head, a little of the tension that had had her spoiling for a fight with said sister leaving her. "No she'd not been at the bevvy because she really convinced herself she'd be the one going and she couldn't be out on a boat when she'd had a few. She sounded enough like our mother that it would've been better if she'd been on the drink though.  _I'm just worried about you Diana, with everything that's happened, you won't be in your right mind._  I could've slapped the face right off her."  
  
"Jesus wept," Sophie muttered but she was laughing too as she took the turn. "Is she forgetting I'm in the same boat? And that we'll quite literally be in the same boat. Together. Boats in boats. I've had too much coffee already." The indicator blinked away at the next turn but there wasn't much traffic as the waited, only the pause for deer just to be safe. The lack of traffic was one of the many benefits of being tucked away here for chunks of the weekends and holidays, a decent bit of peace from the noise of the city.  
  
"It's left going this way," Diana prompted and they were going again. "I know I've been as the young things would say 'a hot mess'. Or Nora too since she likes to forget what age she is, thirty-five going on thirteen because she's a tit. But—But that's my daughter. I know where my head is."  
  
"Does Nora know where hers is?"  
  
Diana stared out the window, trees whipping past them as they drove with the rain beginning to patter down against the windshield, fighting the urge to ignore the question entirely. It'd be too easy to, and Sophie probably wouldn't press her since she was sure that lack of siblings or not she understood family just as well with however the pack worked (something to ask, they'd have the time on the trip) but all of this demanded a certain level of honesty. And she could talk to Sophie anyway. She wanted to. Needed to.  
  
"I've not a clue; Nora gets this way sometimes, whole bee in her bonnet and then fires it right up her arse. You can't really do much of anything with her when she's decided she's going off on one, she's just spoiling for a fight and she'll cut off her nose to spite her face. I don't want to give her the satisfaction. And that's a lot of dad-isms."   
  
"I wasn't going to say," Sophie patted Diana's knee briefly and was it Diana or did she realise  _after_  she'd done it that she'd done it, jerking her hand back to the steering wheel? "It has to be hard for her too though, she's Jillian's auntie and she loves her. You should've seen my lot, roaring and greeting. It all got a bit—I don't even know, you seen Highlander?"  
  
Diana nodded, only a strangled noise managing to escape her.  
  
"Right, well it all got a bit like that scene where the ginger one died. Remember? Oldest teenager who ever lived was dying—"  
  
"He's  _eighteen_!" Diana interrupted, the edge of laughter caught in her throat as they continued the drive, Sophie cutting her a sharp look.  
  
"That's not the point shut up. Anyway." Sophie took a deep breath that suggested she too was struggling with her self-control. "He's dying. He's deid, more or less, and his—I don't know who she is I can't remember she's wailing all over him and James Cosmo is James Cosmo shouting about it. Now put a household of werewolves in there. Violet is Christopher Lambert—"  
  
" _Christ_  I'm going to piss myself!"  
  
"And I am James Cosmo."  
  
Silence reigned for maybe ten seconds before both of them erupted with laughter, Diana lapsing into the fits that only her immediate family ever heard that was somewhere between a dying goose honking and 'a hyena on crack' (Nora's words when Nora had been fifteen) until she had to wipe her eyes, amazed quite frankly that she hadn't wet herself with how much all her muscles hurt by the time she had herself under control. Even then there were fits and starts until she was able to speak again.  
  
"Holy mother of God I needed that. But wait, who's Davey in this scenario?"  
  
"He can be that mental priest, same energy."  
  
Diana turned on the blower, flushed as she was but reluctant to go through the ordeal of wrestling out of her jumper with the seatbelt on, the blast of cold air welcome on her cheeks. "Ah she's no all bad; she's her godmother y'know? And when me and Iona were getting the divorce she stepped up, she's done her fair share, more than she's needed to without me even asking but this is— Some of this isn't hers and I don't have the words for that and I can't just say 'because she's my daughter and you don't get that' because it's not just that but it is. It's not fair to do that to her but I can't help that it's that. As selfish as it sounds."  
  
"It's not selfish when it's your daughter. But…I've noticed the lack of hunting stuff in the house and I talked to Jillian late one night when the two of us were up. That and there's not any hunting stuff kicking about in your place. Nora's got all that out there in the open, or as out there as you can have it without getting arrested."  
  
"She's protective, that's her way." Diana said because she had to say something. She'd parse all of that later, the quiet hum that followed her reply, as she settled again in the seat, turned the blower down so it wasn't on full blast. There was enough going on today with the bags in the boot, the maps, their phones, all the notes they'd written or printed off before setting out. Just the two of them.   
  
That had been part of it too, the other part she certainly wasn't about to tell Sophie any of if she could help it because there wasn't a casual way to drop it into conversation. She wasn't Nora. She couldn't see herself saying 'it's been a while since I got my leg over, not since the divorce really, you up for it, we could both use the stress relief'. That wasn't her sort of line. That wasn't her sort of 'game'. Hard as she'd tried. And she had. Cringe worthy as it had been getting back on the dating scene and getting right the hell back out of it again.  
  
(It had been an ugly argument, it had been why Nora's face had been tripping her too and she  _couldn't_  tell Sophie that part.  
  
"That's why no one returns your calls," Diana had sneered. "You shag them and go."  
  
"Well one of us had to get some. Yours'll seal itself shut before you know it!  
  
It hadn't been one of their finest moments, both of them going to bed sour, waking up that morning after stewing a whole night on the argument with neither of them in the mood to back down on it the way they might have if the stakes had been lower. Too proud to know what to do with themselves.)  
  
"Highlander aside," Diana asked in need of distraction as the shame welled up in her, the shape of her phone making itself known, fingers itching to fire off a text even if the reception was non-existent all the way out here and if it'd more than likely make things worse, "What's it like with all of yours? You've said a bit and Violet's said enough that it sounds tight-knight, something about climbing the walls to escape the smothering?"  
  
"It's not exactly a wolf pack," Sophie said with a click of the tongue and a gusty sight. "I've never really known how much hunters subscribe to that whole notion in the modern era, I mean some of you have to be influenced by tradition and some of you have to get it from fiction too because you should  _hear_  some of the things werewolves believe and that's the ones who grew up in too. I mean they start as babies and absorb it all, it's even worse with the ones that become one as an adult."  
  
"I can only imagine." Diana had heard plenty and she'd been young, she'd watched and read plenty of horror and the supernatural, Jillian had picked that one up from her only with more taste at the very least. "It depends on how you get into it really, there's not one set notion."  
  
"Well usually it's a big extended family for the 'pack'." Sophie lifted a hand to make finger quotes. "Everyone gets in everyone's business, and you get to know more of your business because you pick things up. You can't help what you pick up when it comes to some people; before we get there, I'm going to warn you that I don't have some bloodhound's nose on me, I smell a bit better, hear a bit better, it's a whole thing with the full moon and we're not close to it so there we go. Anyway, you politely ignore lies with each other because everyone smells distress, it's that whole thing with how all of us started off and it's probably why even now we're drawn to groups and probably still for protection and support since we can't exactly announce that we exist. Sometimes wires get crossed and it's a fight at a funeral. Then something like this happens and it's crisis mode, everyone shows up with casseroles as if anyone has ever wanted casseroles, as if a casserole is anything but using up all the shite you've got lurking in the fridge and cupboards."  
  
"I was going to say that sounds like  _every_  funeral I've ever been to or any time anyone's had something wrong with them. There's a reason my parents don't know what's happened or we'd be besieged and I can't deal with them. Not now."  
  
For some reason  _that_  set Sophie off worse than the Highlander thing had, forcing her to pull over into a layby, her whole body shuddering as she bent over the steering wheel held in a white-knuckle grip as Diana reached for her, alarmed, wondering if she'd said the wrong thing, if Sophie was crying instead of laughing until she finally let out a choked breath, tossing her head back.   
  
"God you've no idea."  
  
There was something to be said for being able to sit in the car laughing together with someone who wasn't her sister or daughter, not that she was dead the way Nora insisted, or even whatever it was Jillian implied with her hints or just her looks that verged on embarrassing. Teenagers trying to tell you to get back on the pull, stealing your phone to put  _apps_  on it mum, get with the times. Diana flipped on the radio as Sophie pulled back onto the road for the rest of the drive out to Balmaha, hopefully early enough to beat the tourist traffic for a good spot or maybe if the rain held up it'd put them off as the conversation steered away from families for the moment, Diana still with a smile on her face.  
  


* * *

  
  
"You know many folks with boats?" Sophie asked once Diana had everything secured, both of them on not dry land then at least solid ground with the rain not having let up or worsened since it had begun on the drive out. Inchcailloch was as it often was at this time of year, the waterbus from Luss and Margaret from Balmaha shuttling tourists to and from at regular intervals but it wasn't a great day and that point in the season where the English school holidays hadn't started and anyone who wanted to come to Loch Lomond for a day out looked out and reconsidered when looking at the weather.  
  
"Old friend I used to work with years back," Diana replied as she slung her rucksack over her shoulder after giving the knot one last inspection. The boat was high enough up on the shore that it should be fine but it wasn't hers and she didn't want it to go missing on them, not with the way the waters were battering against the shores on all sides of the islands, the bracken rustling in the winds, the tall trees swaying. "Whole load of them know mam and dad too so there's that but I used to do a bit of gamekeeping work when I was younger before I got sick of my legs being eaten all summer."  
  
"Sounds about right for you. Did you wear shorts the whole time?"  
  
"Don't even go there, ugliest things you've ever seen."  
  
"Oh there's a few things I could show you, bet you looked smashing in them."  
  
Diana wasn't blushing, no, she absolutely was not as she fished the guide she'd printed out of her bag, Sophie joining her as she zipped and unzipped her jacket; despite the rain, the air was closer on the island than it had been in Balmaha, humidity lying over them with the threat of thunderstorms that had rolled in on and off all summer so far. "Right then, we need to pick a starting point from here. We can set up the tent now so we don't need to be lugging that about with us, especially up the summit. You been before?"  
  
"No, it's always one of those things I've been meaning to do but I've never gotten around to."  
  
"Ah well you're here now. It's not too steep but the steps don't account for everyone's legs."  
  
"I did the West Highland Way years back, I had to lug a tent everywhere with me back then with bits of it jabbing me in the back, let's get it done."   
  
There was an indignity to tents no matter how proficient you thought you were with them especially when there were pensioners about with their binoculars and hiking poles to spy a pair of you struggling with flaps and poles and guiding ropes as the rain managed to soak them steadily where clothes rode up as they struggled together, the instructions flapping about in the wind. A pair of ducks, unbothered thanks to years of visitors ready to toss food their way waddled into the proceedings until they were shooed back out again and it was far later than anticipated that Diana and Sophie were done, sweatier and more short-tempered than they had been before.  
  
"Bastarding thing," Sophie cursed with a dark look at the tent as she hoisted up her rucksack, some of their gear safely stashed in the tent, zips padlocked because there were always reprobates as she said, and that had gotten a laugh out of Diana. But it was true, might not be the Waverly and the booze cruisers heading off up from Glasgow to Dunoon or Rothesay and beyond for a cheap stag and hen but you got all sorts cutting about. "Up to the summit, get a lay of the land, quick stroll about the place before we go poking about in the bushes and everything?"  
  
"Sounds good." Sophie followed Diana as she headed off up the path, not too many people to pass them by; the weather seemed to be putting them off and so much the better. "There's not many places for anyone to go hiding about here, is there? Not easily."  
  
"No buildings, not like Inchmurrin but there's people living there on and off and it's busier so that'd be no good but you get deep in the cover there," Diana gestured as they walked, the path beginning an incline that wasn't much fun after a drive and no stretching, not with her dodgy knee that'd be protesting before they hit the summit, "and there's plenty of hiding spots. If they're wanting off the mainland to get in and out to other islands too then it'd be handy."  
  
"Open mind for who'd have been out here?"  
  
"Well we can ask about at the boatyard if you want but if you've got a boat then there's plenty of spots for getting in and out, they might not have bothered checking in. Probably wouldn't have if they're that type we're thinking they are."  
  
Sophie huffed behind her but Diana couldn't risk looking behind to see if she was nodding in agreement or not, not unless she wanted to risk ending up arse over tit with a twisted ankle as the slick path extended before them, the rich scent of wet earth and oak filling the air as they walked. Plenty of time to arm themselves with a big stick and go chopping through the undergrowth like a couple of children once they had a lay of the land, for now it was the steady climb, Diana's clothes sticking to her as she walked, unzipping her jacket as they went, the rain an ever-present smirr all the way to the summit and the view unveiled before them: Luss Glen, Beinn Dubh, Bein Bhreac, Inchfad, Ben Lomond and Conic Hill. Sophie slung an arm around Diana's shoulder, leaning heavily against.  
  
"Would you look at that," she said on a heavy breath, a grin on her face. "Cracking view."  
  
"Aye that it is, c'mon, let's have a seat, bench can't be much worse than us at this rate."  
  
"You know, almost a shame it's this that's brought us all the way out here."  
  
Diana didn't know what to say to that but to nod in agreement, opening the flask she'd kept in the rucksack and savouring the pretence that this could be something else, even for a moment.


	5. Chapter 5

If Diana had asked – which she hadn't, because Diana had revealed herself to be a sensible woman in possession of a wicked sense of humour – then Sophie would've said that the cold spreading up from Inchcailloch's ground was bone chilling. At least the midges had cleared off now that dark had finally fallen, the tourists long since departed with the last smoke of the barbecues blown back out over the water with them, their own dinner done and dusted too. Sophie zipped up the tent after giving up on trying to check her phone; shit reception was to be expected out here, it was always a hazard.  
  
"You see the deer? Spotted a couple of fallow, pure white, think they were swimming over this way." She couldn't help but smile at the idea of them, it was just a shame it'd be too dark to get a decent picture of them and it had been too noisy, too full of people to get a sighting of anything all day, only tracks that skidded off into the undergrowth as evidence of them being startled before she and Diana got to them.  
  
"I'll try keeping them in mind so I don't think it's one of Sawney's lot and go for you in the night." Diana grinned as she rolled out her sleeping bag, the fabric crinkling. Sophie snorted, aiming a lazy swat at her. "But I'm sorry now if I kick you in the shins or something."  
  
"Same goes. You forget how big a deer is until it's right there. Me and Violet were coming out the drive once and this stag comes strutting up the drive bold as you like and I'm just sat in there in the car thinking don't you dare bolt right through my windshield you rocket."  
  
"None of them better come bolting through this tent."  
  
"What're you going to do to a stag?" Sophie watched as Diana muttered, her face flushing an appealing shade of red.  _Not so unlike your sister sometimes are you?_  She didn't call her out on it though, not wanting to risk souring the mood even if they'd had fun taking the piss on and off all day. "Anyway that midge stuff of yours should put them off."  
  
"You slagging off Avon's finest?"  
  
There was something about Diana's tone even from her low crouch that warranted a shove even though they were two grown woman in a tent with barely enough room for the two of them, their sleeping bags, and rucksacks that had been straining at the seams when they'd packed them up this morning. Diana went sprawling as she lost her footing, shrieking, grabbing for Sophie either as a last ditch at keeping her footing or to take Sophie down with her who went down with not an ounce of grace or dignity, Diana wheezing beneath her as they laughed. Until they became aware of hands. Of two grown women. In a tent. Alone. Or Sophie did as Diana's hands gripped her tight, one of Sophie's knees between Diana's thighs from where she'd fallen, hot and sweaty in the confines of the tent. This close it wasn't just the moisturiser as midge repellent or the sweat she could smell but the smoke from the fire they'd cooked dinner on that was clinging to Diana still.  _Get off her_ , she thought but under that, reluctant and hungry,  _God it's been a while hasn't it?_  
  
She sat up, pulled Diana with her who rubbed her hip and popped her knee, and if swore that if Diana asked that it was the rush of sitting up fast that was to blame for her pink cheeks and nothing else.  
  
Not that Diana was looking at her anyway, she was busy tugging her sleeves into order until Sophie shifted herself up and off, clearing her throat like a wee lassie. Worse than a wee lassie as she scooted off to get rid of her boots and park them by the flap of the tent. Why couldn't she just say something? She was bloody old enough to take a knock back and deal with it wasn't she?   
  
"How d'you think they're getting on?" Diana asked, dragging Sophie out of her thoughts as she raked through a rucksack, probably in search of a toothbrush or whatever she was sleeping in that would inevitably be at the bottom if she had the same luck everyone else had.  
  
"Did your Jillian tell you about the cooking experiment her and Violet have planned?"  
  
"No. No she declined to bring me up to speed on that. Is it punishment for my sister?"  
  
"Sometimes Violet takes a notion and you hope you're not the one cleaning up her notion. I don't know if fusion chef is what she's putting down for work experience – do they even do that now?"  
  
"I don't think they do highers now, it's some national qualifications I don't know I can't ask without getting the head bitten off me."  
  
"Well," Sophie tugged her boot off, rolling her socks down from over her jeans and checked for ticks because the trouble with deer was that yes, they looked majestic and all but they were invariably infested with ticks and she'd picked more than her fair share off herself and others (another thing the werewolf stories left out; welcome to the club, invest in tick hooks). "I think she'll be one of those or the manifestation of the thing you see in the small hours when you can't sleep after you tied one on and thought 'doesn't sound too bad'. Unless you went near it with a lit match."  
  
"I know what I've got in that spice rack…" Diana almost sounded regretful. Almost. "I don't get the joys in fusing your tongue to the roof of your mouth and sweating your arse off if that's what you're hinting—" Sophie nodded vigorously enough there was no way Diana could miss it even in her rummaging as she came up triumphant with the jogging bottoms. "But if they're having fun and someone washes up then good for them. They deserve it. I hope there's photos of Nora."  
  
"What happens to Nora, you have to tell me now can't just leave me hanging like that."  
  
"She eats anything spicier than your run of the mill pepper it's embarrassing. She's got the palette of an eighty year old shipbuilder who'd eat nothing but mince and tatties if you let her get away with it so she eats something with a hint of spice and she's sweating, the nose is running down past her chin, the eyes are streaming." Diana sat in silence for a long moment, clothes folded in her lap. "I promise I didn't get my daughter into curries just to torture my sister every time it's Jillian's turn to pick birthdays or where we eat out for special occasions."  
  
"You're a monster. And we're marrying her off to our Davey." Sophie delved into her own bag, hoping she'd remembered to pack a thick pair of socks for bed so her toes wouldn't freeze off in the night. "Actually no, the combined stodge would kill them both."  
  
That set Diana off, half out of her jeans when she started, her pale thighs lined with stretchmarks as Sophie glanced over at her silently laughing form, a hand thrown over her eyes as she flopped backwards to the sleeping bag without a care. "Nora. Rolled along on hunts." A hiccup burst out, loud enough that it had to have hurt, the laughter now real and loud, tipped over into helpless giggles. "My wee roly poly Nora getting wedged between trees stuck down the bottom of hills."  
  
Sophie threw her discarded hoodie at Diana's head and realised it was the most she'd laughed in weeks, even before Violet had been shot, and wondered what the hell that said about her life.  
  


* * *

  
  
At some point in the night once they'd stopped laughing, given up on squinting in the dark like a pair of old women over maps and plans for the morning ahead of them, settled down to sleep, someone had managed to roll over. Which in and of itself was something of a feat since the tent could hardly be called luxurious and sleeping bags induced a sense of claustrophobia in Sophie at the best of times; the idea of zipping them together so they weren't two worm monstrosities and able to share body heat had made them a hell of a lot more appealing than any other time she'd been subjected to them over the course of her life. But still, they'd managed to get all in a fankle, Sophie with an arm flung out with Diana's cheek resting on it, the arm slowly going numb now she was awake enough to realise it, Diana turned round into her space when she'd gone to sleep facing the other way. It wasn't any better down about the legs situation either where ankles were caught in loose fabric, no easy way to wriggle out and away without risking a good clattering. So there really wasn't all that much Sophie could do as she found herself dredged up and out of sleep, groggy and wondering what had woken her in the first place, if it was the numb lost cause of her arm that she had little real sense of past the shoulder that'd start screaming to life as soon as Diana lifted her head.   
  
Sophie could shift her arm. She knew that. It'd be a reasonable thing to do in this sort of situation as the early morning drizzle drummed against the tent – that was what had woken her, she was used to rain of course but not how it sounded against fabric (no leaks though, definitely a result) – to slide her arm free. She could say  _you're on my arm, sorry_  but she wouldn't need to. She could probably even do it without waking Diana up .  
  
But Diana was a hunter. Diana might just as easy startle awake if she did it without saying something, especially when they were here looking into whoever had come after their girls. Who better to know about instinct taking over than someone who had their own pounding in their ears when they least wanted it to?  
  
 _You're staring_ , she told herself sternly as her eyes remained fixed on Diana's face, slack with sleep and with a thin sheen of sweat that had her hair sticking to it.  _You'll wake her up, people do that. People train themselves out of going for the throat when they feel eyes on them in the night._  
  
(Which was a load of pish because that was something Davey had said when  _he_  was pished one night, all 'maybe that's just you hen' when they'd been drunk on the couch still watching some horror film late at night, Davey from behind his fingers trying not to shriek the whole time. Violet had been with Sophie's mum, a night off from the small person she loved but who sometimes pitter-pattered down the hall in the small hours to ask for a glass of water and scared the ever-loving shit out of Sophie.  
  
Sometimes Sophie still wished a right spooky wee bitch on Davey, it'd serve him right.)  
  
Turning away to twist onto her back as much as she could provoked a groan of complaint from Diana right by her ear and before Sophie knew what she was doing she'd wormed her other arm free of the sleeping bag to brush Diana's hair back and away from her face, a low hushing noise in her throat to settle her.  
  
If only an errant stag would swim across now, one of those white ones they'd heard the tourists looking for but no it was only the rain, the wind in the trees, the loch still lapping at the shore so she tucked her arm back into the warmth of the sleeping back as the goosebumps prickled, the guilt along with it,  _and_  the questions that came with the guilt. Why was she guilty? What reason did she possibly have to feel guilt of any kind? Diana grumbled again, rolling over so she was on her front. Plastering her right up against Sophie's front, check tucked snugly into her collarbone all hot and flushed, Sophie doing all that she could to lie still as her arm throbbed to life, stinging and pulsing with heat. She ground her teeth under the unwelcome onslaught of sensation coming back to it, breathing carefully through her nose, biting her lip—  
  
Diana blinked owlishly, yawning as she went up on an elbow. Thankfully not the one on Sophie's belly.  
  
"Time's it?" Her voice was a slur, thick and heavy with sleep, her eyes barely open and her head only lifted as much as she needed to. All the better to help Sophie avoid eyes she doubted she could meet.  
  
"Early. Before the alarms."  
  
"Right good, I'm going back to sleep."  
  
Sophie stared at her for a heartbeat, waiting for a moment of recognition that never came as Diana settled again with a jaw-popping yawn and a long stretch. It was—Well it was something to have not only another person in her bed again even if it was a sleeping bag in a tent on an island in the rain but to have someone like Diana who was easy to be with, who understood her life from the other side in a way she hadn't reckoned with. Easy enough that she didn't stop herself from allowing Diana to tuck herself closer again, fingertips fanning over her ribs to lightly stroke as she fell asleep. Part of her wanted to stagger outside. To run to the boat or to swim back to the mainland but that panic had lived with her for years, when hadn't it? When hadn't it just been her and Violet, the rest of the pack about them but no one else? Was it the same for Diana after she'd split with Iona but with Nora? It wasn't meant to be this complicated at her age, second guessing herself, you were meant to be able to just come out and say things, say what you meant and wanted instead of worrying knots in yourself. But here she was, able to smell Diana's shampoo now she'd wriggled closer again, wondering who was going to pretend this hadn't happened in the morning. Or could they just laugh about it. Shrug it off. They probably could.  
  
They'd had moments, not just cooking together where it had been homely enough that part of Sophie had ached with it but curling up on the couch when the girls were in bed. Or when the girls were about and coming out of their haze of painkillers, chattering away, blundering about the way only girls could. Nora making faces and somehow always nudging them together. Ringing round to check in and—had she been imagining the tones now she thought about it again? The teasing?   
  
Werewolf single mum never left her with the biggest dating pool if she wanted to be truthful to them and to herself and didn't want to make things awkward when it didn't work out. Being around the pack hadn't blurred her boundaries so much that she was misreading signals either, she was just as rusty as accused at times though some of her chief accusers were married (discounted increasingly for however long they'd been away from going out on dates) or as single as her so what good was their advice? Right now though she was exhausted with a long day ahead of her still, a warm body curled against her and she yawned, closing her eyes despite knowing full well she wouldn't fall asleep again.   
  
Maybe Diana would forget all about it when the alarms blared. It'd be for the best if she did, really, no reason to make it awkward when they still had so much left to do.  
  
All the same, Sophie hoped she wouldn't.  
  


* * *

  
  
After the previous day where they'd gone to the graveyard, the farm ruins, up the paths, and round the whole island on the designated trails, the morning saw them setting out to investigate the undergrowth more deeply for any signs of someone who might have been camping out off the beaten track the way they had. The rain steadily worsened, the sky darkening above them with the canopy overhead offering little in way of protection and when Diana fell for the third time inside half an hour, bent over her ankle with her breath whistling through her teeth for a good fifteen minutes until she could hobble on it, rising covered in mud and grass with a temper equal to the stain spanning her thigh and arse, they were forced to admit defeat and return to the mainland. Footprints or anything else of use were long gone if they'd even still been about thanks to the heavy traffic of tourists in and out, they could hardly hear one another talking without shouting let alone anyone who might be lurking about, and their patience was steadily fraying. Doing themselves an injury on the search wasn't an option when they had no reception and little chance of someone looking for them unless Nora launched a rescue mission.  
  
Which, knowing Nora, wasn't out of the question but that was only going to do more harm than good in Sophie's mind.   
  
Heading back to finish packing up their campsite with the only dubious benefit of the rain being the lack of midges, it was Sophie's turn to trip over a stray can that must've gotten loose from after dinner the night before.  
  
"You all right?" Diana asked, grabbing at her arm.   
  
"Fine, thought I'd tossed it in the bin, that's all." She stuffed it in – again – with more force than was necessary once the tent was down, the bags packed the rest of the site cleared away as they headed for the mainland again. The tent had taken longer to take down than it had to put up, Sophie sweating away even as the rain dripped down the back of her neck.   
  
The downpour came on by the time they were in the boat, no sense in fumbling with a hood that would be blown back off her head as they travelled in ugly silence back to the boatyard, neither of them wanting to admit that it had been a waste of precious time when they had so little to go on for fear of making it worse, or that was Sophie's read on it as they tied it off, Sophie helping Diana up and out as they tramped their way back to the car park. A larger part of her than she was proud of wondered if Diana remembered waking up the way she had and if she resented Sophie for it.  _Grow up and get a grip_ , she told herself,  _neither of you are wee lassies._  
  
Still, the notion was hard to shake.   
  
Parts of the car park were beginning to flood by the time they made it back, Sophie unlocking it as fast as she could with her frozen fingers so they could take shelter under the open boot to wrestle out of their jackets with the rucksacks tossed inside before they both took a seat for the clean, and more importantly dry, clothes they'd left before heading out.  
  
"Well that was a washout," Sophie said, finally breaking the silence with no small amount of bitterness in her voice as she attempted to wring her hair out for all the good that'd do her. "Should we ring and let them know we'll be back early?"  
  
Diana blew out a sigh, dragged both hands down her face as she tugged off her boots and socks, dumping them on the ground. "Aye might as well. Is there anyone about? Don't think there is but I don't fancy flashing anyone my scants y'know. Present company excluded."  
  
Sophie found herself nodding, unable to speak as she swung herself out and round to take a look: a few cars parked, one big tour bus that had probably dropped off a blue rinse brigade but that was it, the place mostly empty. The dreich Scottish summer the sort to put off those who weren't a hardy bunch or the ones who already had it scheduled and weren't able or willing to see something on their list of things to do spoiled by the weather. Next to her, Diana began the arduous process of wriggling and shimmy out of soaking wet jeans, long pale legs bared save for where she was bright red where she'd fallen and where the rain had stung her raw, a few bruises blooming by her hip, another a few inches above the left knee, an ankle already beginning to swell.  
  
Her left knee was frozen to the touch even beneath Sophie's numb fingers. Because Sophie was touching for some Godforsaken reason.  
  
And Diana was sat in the boot of Sophie's car with her wet jeans in a sodden heap by her side, the dry pair bundled in her lap to give her some semblance of dignity and decency though not much since she was, for all intents and purposes sat in the boot of a car exposed to anyone who came tramping into the Balmaha car park with Sophie's hand on her knee. As if that was just how it went. Maybe no one would mind that much. Might think they were—  
  
 _Behave yourself_ , she thought sharply with a shake that had nothing to do with the rain.  
  
"Is it—" She fought to find the words as Diana watched her, mouth pulling into a smile even as Sophie seriously considered if she could just tip her head all the way back and drown herself somehow. "Is that all right? And the hip? And your ankle? I mean it looked bad when you went down."  
  
"When I went down?" Diana smirked and Sophie knew her face was scarlet as she drew her hand back to allow Diana to get her dry jeans on. "I'll know in a bit, you know how it is – wake up with bruises or find some you've no memory of then later on you can't bend things without them protesting like a door needing WD-forty."  
  
"I've probably got arnica back at yours."  
  
"Of course you do, you and my sister."  
  
Sophia managed to laugh at that, getting changed herself now that the jeans were sticking in uncomfortable places, the two of them finishing up and dashing to the front as fast as they could after a brief argument over who should drive them back. She argued that Diana had hurt herself and it was no trouble, she didn't mind the drive back but Diana had grabbed the keys off her and that had settled it with no need for comment until the demand for the blower to be switched from cold to hot as the windows began to fog up almost the instant they got on the way, Diana curling her free hand almost comically over the vent.  
  
"We might need to come back though I doubt it's worth it, there's too many folk for footprints and if they've got a boat – and I think they'd need to – it's too easy for them to be out and about and watching us from another island easy enough." Diana had to raise her voice to be heard over the screaming whine of the air blasting out of the blower that had her hair streaming away from her face, turning her cheeks pink.  
  
"Maybe the ring round'll bear us some fruit, I'm still waiting to hear back, I know Nora was too." She listened to the indicators blinking, waiting impatiently for the car in front to stop dithering and decide to get moving. Tourists. Or people off on holiday behaving worse than Sunday drivers but at least it wasn't Loch Lomond where there were accidents every other weekend or so it seemed when someone fancied themselves a racer or didn't know spots on the roads where they couldn't just sit or turn. "I mean we could be well off the mark but there's something about it that just seemed right to me, at least if I was trying to put myself in the shoes of some werewolf hiding off and working with someone else. They're probably vulnerable. Probably don't want to be around people. There aren't many other places but here where you could get much more remote. They might be on an estate but that's…they prefer isolating themselves as far as possible, end up sleeping rough. It's always sad."  
  
Sad was woefully short of the mark but eventually you ran out of words to describe it and she'd been working with people struggling with what they were for years.  
  
"I'm sorry," Diana's voice was barely audible; she'd turned to face Sophie for the briefest of moments, a small smile of sympathy offered. "There's always a few you try to send to get help but god love them some just…they don't want it. Or they can't accept it. Any of it. It's like some of ours who can't get themselves out the past and turn into these old wrecks, I mean that's why I don't keep things in the house growing up. It's why I even feel weird saying we're hunters. We don't hunt. It's caretaking. I'd rather try and set someone back on the straight and narrow, it's not their fault more often than not."  
  
"Not the bad old days that it was but—"  
  
"But there's still folk out there with guns who don't give a shit." A hard edge crept into Diana's voice. Thinking about Jillian no doubt. Thinking about Violet. Thinking about Sophie too; she knew that three people under her roof now had been touched by the same sort of violence, the way it rippled outwards and swept others up. "D'you ever think how it'd be if the world knew?"  
  
Sophie closed her eyes, swallowing past the lump in her throat. Of course she'd thought about it. Hadn't they all thought about it over the years? And there was always something that crept in somewhere – bits and pieces that they shared because it's what people did, whenever some journal published a paper no matter how obscure, or if the news published a study where it looked like they were getting things right, that sickly blend of fear and dread and excitement – as well as a whole raft of conspiracies that went with it about how it hadn't come to light yet at all. (Sophie belonged to the camp that followed the simplest explanation: that people just wouldn't believe it because that's how people were and thought that they'd left all that behind in the dark days of myths and legends, so much the better that so many supernatural stories got it so wrong, and that so many 'believers' were absolutely mental.)   
  
"Hey." Diana gave her a nudge, brows pulled together so she'd obviously been sat there silent for too long with her eyes shut. "Look I didn't—If I offended you that wasn't—"  
  
"No you're fine," Sophie interrupted, pushing herself to sit up before her back protested. "It's just…we do think about it. And talk about it. And it's too big a thing to think about really, I mean, when are people great at accepting anything without it being a whole stramash?"  
  
Her phone buzzed in her pocket; signal returned to them, back to civilisation.  
  
"I'll get in touch." It was a deflection and well they both knew it. Diana was kind enough to say nothing as she rang the house, setting the phone on her thigh and hitting speaker as two voices immediately started talking over the top in unison to the steady whirring of the windscreen wipers.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
There was a reason they called gin mother's ruin and it was on Diana's third of the night that she knew why because it came with bitter clarity. The first and second had loosened her tongue enough to have her sharing things she never should've shared with Nora who from the glint in her eye was taking far too great an interest in it all, forcing Diana into the drastic measure of slapping a hand over her mouth to shut her up since it was the two of them downstairs, the telly droning away in the background but not enough to cover her sister's noise.  
  
"Wheesht!" Diana hissed, cutting a glance up at the ceiling to listen for footsteps or creaking but none came and she heaved a sigh of relief, Nora's mouth moving under her hand until she let her go. "You'll wake the whole house."  
  
"Your arse I will. If you think those girls are asleep you're daft, they'd make a herd of elephants sound like sugar plum fairies the way they were galumphing about the place. They're probably up there watching something that's not  _Done in by my boyfriend_  or  _Glasgow's finest on CCTV_  - what're we watching?" Nora looked at the screen, then at the remote, out of reach, and gave up. Whatever channel they were on was offering up late night crime related selections, easy to sit through without paying much attention, one blurring into the other. Diana was sure she'd seen half of them before at some point.  
  
"Why don't you go up and join them? Watch some more Riverdale; I know you're dead keen."  
  
"One, that's just sad and I'm not desperate. Two, I hear the name Archie I think about that old gamekeeper dad knew, remember the one? All that big wispy hair," Nora waved a hand out from her head to better demonstrate, almost sloshing her drink over her hand, "big baldy heid you could've fried an egg on when the sun was out?"  
  
"Shorts in all weathers, knock-kneed Archie? Jesus  _wept_  I'll be seeing that when they're talking about Riverdale now." Diana laughed, all the summers decades behind her rising up, the years when she and Nora had been chased by him as he'd bellowed worse than a bull, the two of them shrieking to get home before he grassed them up to their parents. "What did he call that daft dug of his?"  
  
"He had loads of daft dugs."  
  
"No, you know the one I'm on about. That glaikit one."  
  
" _God_  - Eddie? Mental Eddie?"  
  
"That's it! Eddie. Hated that thing, he was one bad day from going feral that. Part springer spaniel, part Satan's left bollock."  
  
"Mind when he caught you coming over the fence, all those brambles spilling out your pockets and smeared all over your face? Didn't you pee yourself?"  
  
"Piss off no I didn't pee myself." Diana tried to pull in a shaky breath, fanning her face. "Change the subject I don't want to think about any of this anymore, I regret it."  
  
"Course you don't pishy knickers." Diana aimed a lazy kick at Nora's legs but Nora avoided it, rolling her glass in her hands so her rings clinked against the engravings. Good heavy whisky glasses but they served well enough for the gin. "I remember feeling babysat too, y'know, when I was their age and something happened. You were older. You got to be involved in more things. I was all cooped up, they need a bit of space…speaking of—"  
  
The grin Diana was on the receiving end of was the bastard child of a leer, not helped at all by the suggestive eyebrow action going that was lit by the telly, turning her sister in some sort of unholy cretin intent on mischief, extortion, harassment. Someone certain she'd get her way as she patted the couch with her hand hard enough to make Diana jump.  _You'd be the one trying on coats at an empty_ , Diana thought, which wasn't really fair and not something Nora would do but it was just something about the attitude, the way her sister looked and behaved that she almost believed that she could.  
  
" _No_ -" Raising her glass – no, no, she was woman enough to admit she was brandishing the thing – Diana held it Nora's way, leaning away. "Don't you dare, shut your dirty mouth."  
  
"I've said nothing but I want all the details!"  
  
"What details! I've already told you all the details, what more details d'you think I've got stashed away?"  
  
"So tell me again, it's you, when did you last give me gossip. You were waking up in her arms," Nora simpered, batted her eyelashes dramatically enough she nearly sloshed her gin right into her lap, "The two of you all alone on Inchcailloch together. Falling asleep again. In her arms. You could've made a move. That's just a friendly suggestion from your wee sister right there."  
  
"Booted her out you mean."  
  
"That's a bit harsh." Not that Nora winced. If Diana was any judge, Nora might even look proud as she took a sip of her drink.  
  
An invitation then to sweep the leg.  
  
"When I've been getting Jilly-bean ready—"  
  
" _Oh my god_  not this again!" Nora sank down into the couch as the mortification turned her scarlet, spreading up to the tips of her ears and down her throat, the drink perched between her thighs to free up a hand to cover her face. "Once! That was once and well you know it, if I die first—"  
  
Diana interrupted before Nora could even think about finishing that sentence. "Oh you can bet your arse I've a funeral speech ready to go. If we make it to the pensioner years and you go first I'll totter on up there to tell that one, I'll have it all written down for Jilly-bean if needs must. Poor boy."  
  
"Poor boy nothing he had a wonderful night and that's all he was getting."  
  
"It's not the night. It's the morning. Interrogated by your wee niece over tea and toast."  
  
"No one said you had to feed him. It was one night and then he was to sling his hook!"  
  
"Came down looking like he'd been mauled," Diana continued, without missing a beat, enjoying how Nora squirmed and let out the sort of groan a person did when they'd been punched in the stomach and were lying on the floor. "I mean I had to feed him, didn't I, couldn't just send him home looking like that or he might not've made it home. Nearly gave him bus fare and all."  
  
Nora blew a raspberry, kicking Diana's foot hard enough to jostle her sore leg and have her hissing. She'd given up on icing it, the bag of peas tossed back in the freezer for tea another night. "We're getting off track, stop it, this is about you and what you were getting up to in a tent on an island because some part of you knows what it's doing and what it wants. Sleeping you knows you need to get a leg over because oh look what happens, your leg was slung over hers and then that legs gets fondled."  
  
It had been an unfortunate moment to take a drink because it ended up being spat back into the glass. But it wasn't as if anyone else was lurking about to see, just her and Nora who'd seen worse as Nora at least leant over to pat her back. "It wasn't fondling!" The protest was weaker than she wanted it to be, courtesy of the burn in her eyes and the back of her throat.  
  
"I've done plenty in my day but being sat in the boot of car stripped down to my scants letting another woman stroke my knees after I slept in my arms isn't one of those things." Nora sat back again with an irritating air of smug satisfaction writ large.  
  
"Well you're straight."  
  
"Fine, a lad. I'm just saying."  
  
"I wasn't just in my knickers anyway," Diana muttered but that was a weak argument, and as far as arguments went it wasn't much of one either.  
  
"Right, sorry, knickers and dressed from the waist up. How does that make it—" Nora groped the air as if the word would come to her until she gave up. "I don't know, how's it more whatever when you're in the nuddy or close enough from the waist down?"  
  
Diana knew exactly what her sister meant and necked the gin before she admitted it. "Don't know, it's—right it was something."  
  
"Did you want it to be something? Bit more than something?"  
  
She sighed, turning herself back to the telly, mindful of where she was still aching where she'd fallen earlier and how it flared to life at odd moments as the pressure shifted on the bruise that had darkened as the day went on. Maybe she should've taken Sophie up on that arnica after all – and if that thought didn't bring the heat to her cheeks given what her and her sister were talking about then nothing would, and Nora was watching her more intently, the weight of her gaze resting, as good as nose pressed against her cheek – as Diana's attention remained on the screen. A man with an impressive expanse of middle-age spread and a sheen of sweat was rambling on about a crime she'd missed most of the details of, cutting back and forth to poorly done re-enactments with a grainy filter on top just to drive home that it was a re-enactment of the crime because some people were thick.  
  
"Diana." Nora poked her in the calf with her toe. Diana edged away, reluctant to say anything. "Haw, Diana." Again, more urgency in her tone and the nudging.  
  
"Why's it even matter? There's more important things to be getting on with like the lassies being attacked." Nora had the grace to blush at being snapped at, gulping the last of her gin down as she pushed herself up. "Sorry that wasn't—"  
  
"No you're fine, I get it, it's still raw. I love her too but I'm no her mum. And Sophie's my pal too so it's tense. It's shit. What did you say that night?"  
  
"We'll figure it out."  
  
"Exactly. Want another?" Nora was by the old dresser their dad had built years ago when their parents had taken over the place from his parents, half of it turned to a booze cabinet at this point with more decanters than anyone had a right to own.  
  
"I shouldn't."   
  
"Ah go on, take a drink."  
  
"All right, it's not like we're going anywhere tomorrow not with the storm blowing in." Diana accepted the drinks as Nora came back staggering – not her drunk walk, she had a bit more of the cowboy in her somehow when she was drunk – just stiff legs and probably pins and needles now she'd gotten up and moving as she flopped back down. "Give us the remote or find something that's not this tripe."  
  
"Look, I'm not trying to push you or anything, far be it from me to give you relationship advice, I think we both agreed we've got a different way of looking at things," Nora said at length once she'd switched over to the late night news, leaning her head on Diana's shoulder who laid her head atop Nora's. "But it's been a long time. And if you like her just say. You should be happy you know, you deserve a bit of that."  
  
"You softie," Diana muttered into her sister's hair and knew she was smiling.  
  
"Don't say a word, you'll ruin my reputation."


	6. Chapter 6

"Jesus," Sophie couldn't help but laugh softly at the sight before her at the kitchen table, a figure not so much slumped as poured into the seat, spilling onto it and where her breakfast would be if she weren't refusing to look at it. "You look rougher than a badger's arse."  
  
The giggles reminded her, belatedly, of the girls steadily demolishing their breakfasts with the most exaggerated crunching Sophie had ever heard, Jillian especially, and this was after toast that had been swimming in butter. Diana hadn't been able to look at it, a deeply miserable groan rumbling up and out of her when she'd caught sight of them.  
  
"Pair of devils," she muttered, face resting against her arm. "Something died in my mouth last night."  
  
"What were you drinking?" Jillian asked, leaning forward over the table to crunch – Sophie was astonished anyone could crunch that loud truth be told but she'd probably done something not unlike that herself – directly in front of Diana who curled inwards, miserably.   
  
"Gin. Don't—don't drink gin, Jilly-bean. Or you Violet. Never drink gin. Or Southern Comfort for that matter, that's why Nora's on the couch."  
  
"What's Southern Comfort?" Violent asked, right before she lifted her breakfast bowl to her lips to slurp the milk down.  
  
Scandalised, Sophie pointed to her from where she was stirring proper porridge ( _none of that microwave instant shite_ , Nora had said only for Diana to point out that it was mostly for baking but anyone could help themselves). "Violet!" At Sophie's whimper she lowered her voice, wincing apologetically even if Sophie couldn't see her do it. "Where're your manners I didn't raise some wee besom!"  
  
"Sorry." Sullen enough or, actually when she turned back to the porridge that was looking about ready, petulant enough that Violet wasn't sorry at all. And probably pulling a face at her expense with Jillian behind her back. "But what's Southern Comfort?"  
  
"D'you mind that time Davey stayed at ours on Hogmanay, he'd come back from a party, did some first footing? Well I had a bottle, someone at work got me it as a present, secret Santa, and I might've told him you couldn't get a hangover drinking Southern Comfort."  
  
"You're a monster," Diana croaked from the table, less muffled so Sophie assumed she'd pushed herself to sit upright.   
  
"He necked half the bottle."  
  
"Davey spent half the day crying in the shower," Violet explained for Jillian or Diana's benefit. Probably Jillian's, it'd all be coming back to her and it hadn't been a kind thing to do but Davey was a grown-up and knew what drink did, Sophie had been younger, but he still shouldn't have listened to her in the first place. Gullible boy that he'd been back in those days. "We put a bucket in with him and he was just bawling, shirt off, head in the bucket and slapping at the shower because he felt better. Poor Davey."  
  
"Is that why Nora's still on the couch?" Jillian asked.  
  
"Either that or someone only had the legs to get one person up the stairs." Sophie suggested, turning the hob off to serve up breakfast because by God she'd be forcing something into Diana even if she had to wrestle her to do it. Which was a bad road to go down because she'd been wondering about the drinking, honestly, some of the noise that had drifted upstairs to her.  
  
They hadn't talked about it and if the girls hadn't been at the table—  
  
But they were. And Diana was hungover. Maybe in a small puddle of her own slobber as she set the bowl down with a great clatter to have her jumping up. A baleful glare was aimed at Sophie but it fell short of the mark when her eyes were puffy and bleary as they were.  
  
"Are you two going back to the island?" Violet asked, sliding herself out from her seat to put her bowl in the sink. She still winced as she did it but she was coming on leaps and bounds, Sophie was happy to note, no longer the pale wobbling shadow she'd been on arrival to the house.   
  
On cue, the rain began again, Sophie sighing and stirring sugar into her porridge. "Probably not 'til that lets up, there's no use in going out."  
  
"Someone might break a hip," Jillian pointed out cheerfully. "Mum. Mum.  _Mum_!"  
  
"What?" Diana's head lifted, two hands rubbing over her face before she looked down at the bowl. "Right fine  _mother_."  
  
"Should I go wake Nora?" Jillian asked, looking far too pleased with herself.  
  
"You can roll her off the couch and straight down the hill," Diana muttered around a first tentative mouthful, hastily sprinkling the sugar in.  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Absolutely not."  
  
"Then don't say that because it sounds like an invitation."  
  
"Guess that rules anyone out of doing anything today so," Violet looked between the two of them and Sophie's heart sank, sure that an ambush was being sprung on them, her the only one sober enough to realise in the moment, "can we go into town?"  
  
"I know there's stuff happening but we rang Davey—"  
  
"Davey's taking you?" Sophie asked, eyebrow lifting.  
  
"If you say it's fine. And Diana."  
  
"We thought you'd not want us out and about on our own after what happened and Davey seemed a decent compromise," Jillian explained, up from the table too, sorting out the kettle the way that daughters tended to when there was a grown-up in need of buttering up.   
  
"You hatched a plan then?" Breakfast was reviving Diana so it seemed, her chin still propped up on one hand while she shovelled the porridge in.   
  
"Shopping, pictures, stoatin' about the place. There's a thing on at the museum too maybe if we're not sore or tired."  
  
Over the noise of the kettle boiling, Jillian's mischief was still apparent. "Is this what happens when you're auld?"  
  
"I'd show you but if I move I'll be sick. And I can't guarantee it'd be on you. What's on at the museum anyway?"  
  
"Dinosaur!" Both of them said it in unison and it was remarkable, sometimes, the way some things had anyone reverting back to their childhood.  
  
"No wonder Davey agreed; he have any clue you'll be dragging him round looking at clothes too?"  
  
"Davey needs new clothes too, he's getting into dad gear already and you know it, he'll be making noises when he lifts things if he's not careful," Violet said as she handed Jillian the milk without being asked and Sophie wondered what things she was missing out on, what adventures they were getting up to away from supervision but the pair were  _happy_  and that was what mattered. "We're going to Waterstones too, get some books."  
  
"Nora's wanting a book, if she's not up before you're off—" There was an interruption at Diana's words, the flurry of permission granted. " _If_  she's not up I'll give you some money for it. Now go ring Davey, get yourselves changed so I can get peace, my heid's bursting."   
  
"Thank you mum, love you." Jillian hurried over, kissing Diana on the cheek, then remembered herself and brought over two teas, Violet kissing Sophie's cheek before they scampered off up the stairs with a shriek.  
  
In the next room Nora groaned long and low, a dying beast, putting Sophie in mind of David Attenborough and hyenas about a buffalo, and she had to fight the laugh or else her breakfast would be going down the wrong way; Diana wasn't in much of a position to help her if she started choking. Diana gave her a funny look until the girls had thundered up the stairs, music on in whatever room they were in forcing a deep groan out of her.  
  
"Christ. When do they stop with that?"  
  
"What bit?"  
  
"Making that much noise getting place to place. Ridiculous."  
  
"Once they're old enough to drink, well, when they think they're old enough so give it a couple more years to try being sly about it. That's how it went for me."  
  
"Oh don't even talk about drink the now, you'll gie me the boak."  
  
Finishing up her breakfast, Sophie moved to , soak the bowl and the pot before anything could dry where it'd have to be scraped off later, she took a deep breath, fingers curled over the edge of the sink as Diana's spoon clinked against her bowl again and again, deep heavy breaths out through the nose.  
  
"Why d'you end up having a session last night anyway? Was it that bad, one night on an island?" She tried to joke but she couldn't tell if it landed or not, if she was imagining her voice pulling tight when she asked.  _Plenty of reasons to have a drink with your sister, plenty of reasons for a drink or two to take a turn for stocious._  
  
"One of those things, I'd been avoiding it y'know, everything that happened with Jillian and it didn't seem like a good idea and after…just me and Nora up watching shite telly?" Diana pushed her bowl away from her, murmuring a soft thanks when Sophie lifted it to drop it in the sink too though that was to give her something to do anyway. "You were catching up or we'd have—it wasn't—"  
  
"No, it's not—I mean it's your house. It's just…if things were weird, we're both grown-ups right? Old enough to bring it up and not have it be weird?"  
  
"You're—Oh!"  
  
Diana went red, prettier than she had any right to be when she still had that post-drink puffiness to her features. Sophie pushed her sleeves up, nodding slowly as she leant back against the sink, some part of her guilty at springing this on the hungover but Diana seemed more or less with it, Nora was passed out still, the girls were upstairs, and the sooner they addressed it, the better. Hopefully. God she really hoped so or she'd be stood here making an arse of herself and suffering the consequences until all this was over and done with.   
  
"Look it was…Nora was being funny about it, that's all, probably why I got as pished as I did so I could ignore her better going on about how I needed to get my—you get the picture, that's what Nora's like. And I was the one the just. Was awake. And pretended I wasn't. Takes two do whatever that was and then I got stripped down to my drawers."  
  
"Not saying I minded any of that but there've been a few mixed messages." Sophie smiled, something between her shoulders loosening just a fraction that let her breathe a bit. Overhead the music reached a crescendo, warbling vocals up and over the guitars. "Reckon we're both a bit long in the tooth for that game."  
  
"You might be right about that one." Diana pushed her chair back, steadier on her feet than she'd been arriving at breakfast. "So, we ignoring it, just talking about it or going for it because we're a bit long in the tooth like you just said?"  
  
"Sure that's not the gin talking?" Sophie didn't want to ask but she had to. If only for her sake.   
  
"Damn sure, come here."  
  
And if she'd had her doubts before, Diana crowding her back against the kitchen counter, a warm hand on her hip, the other on her jaw to guide her into the kiss put paid to them as she ignored the edge of the sink digging into her back, only Diana's mouth on hers, the warm soft skin at the small of Diana's back under her jumper as she slid her hands up and under.  
  
"There'll be no living with Nora after this," Diana murmured after, when a clatter upstairs finally had them breaking apart even if there wasn't a thing to be ashamed or worried about.  
  
"Good thing she's still knocked out, c'mon, we'll see the girls off and make good use of a rainy day won't we?"  
  


* * *

  
  
It was the door that woke Nora up. Probably a good thing too because her cursing it and rolling off the couch with a thump combined with the two pairs of feet thundering down the stairs had Diana and Sophie pulling apart with reluctance from where they'd not done much of anything since they'd been left alone. Diana's heart was racing, one of Sophie's hands splayed across the small of her back and the other had tangled in her hair, nails scratching her scalp. Diana had one hand braced against the counter to hold her steady, the other curled at Sophie's hip, thumb hooked in her belt loop to pull her closer.  
  
"Christ." It was all she could manage, a shaky exhale as everyone was shouting.  
  
"Is someone no' getting that!" Nora – sounding more like their mother than she'd want Diana to point out – as someone (hopefully Jillian) landed with a thump at the bottom of the stairs.  
  
"I've got it, I've got it!"  
  
"This is payback," Diana said, not letting go or stepping back as Sophie laughed, stealing another brief kiss. "I was teasing Nora something rotten about boys she left half-mauled in front of Jillian and now…"  
  
Sophie's hand left her hair and no, Diana's knees didn't do anything embarrassing, that was her arm protesting that had her buckling the way it did, nothing more. "It's a good look on you, wouldn't say half-mauled. Not yet at least but maybe I've got different standards."  
  
"Away with you."  
  
There were voices getting closer, heavy footsteps and them having done nothing so they did part, clothes tugged back into place, Diana running her fingers through her hair as she hoped it'd pass for a hungover mother dragging her hands through it if needs must as a boy – the terrible thing about getting past a certain age was that they all turned into boys and girls – appeared, dragged by Violet and pushed by Jillian, Nora looming behind him. Or trying to. A slim young man maybe not so accustomed to his height from the way his shoulders curled in, or not with this much loud attention from giggling girls, in this house. He raked his hand through his hair, trying to smile at them both as he hovered.  
  
"Hi Sophie, and eh—you'll be Diana then? Bit odd finally seeing you after getting the gossip back and forth not that there's—" Red up to his ears as Jillian snorted, Davey extracted himself and held out a hand. "I'm Davey and I'll be their tour guide and chaperone today."  
  
"Diana, good to meet you too, I've heard plenty as well don't worry." Diana smiled back as Nora collapsed into the nearest empty seat, head pillowed on her arms.  
  
"Is she…" Davey glanced over in alarm.  
  
"She's a pure jakey," Jillian said before Diana could say anything else and the suddenness of it had her wheezing, Sophie thumping her back when she choked. "You got book money, mum said you wanted something."  
  
"Hang on I've…" Nora groaned, sticking a hand in her pocket to rummage about, a couple of battered and crumpled notes clutched in her fist that she held out. "Keep the change, I'll text you it. Or text me. I'm…I'm fragile."  
  
"That's Nora, by the by," Jillian continued as she took the money from Nora who slumped back down but with her arms covering her head because god forbid she didn't go for the full amateur dramatics when the consequences of her actions came back to bite her.   
  
"That Nora?" Davey asked, looking slowly about everyone in the room before his gaze landed heavily on Sophie.  
  
Violet took his hand again, patting it gently. "That Nora. I'll get my bag—" Bouncing forward, she hugged Sophie who kissed the top of her head. "Where's your keys?"  
  
"What if I want a tea or a coffee, I just got here, I drove already you!"  
  
"We can still sit in the car, what if we want to talk away from everyone else?"  
  
"Fine, fine, here's the keys." Slapping the keys into her hand, Davey rolled his eyes only to have to step out the way as Jillian scurried past him for her hug.  
  
"Remember—" Diana started.  
  
"Behave myself, be careful, keep our phones on, Davey's in charge and if something looks dodgy we get away and scream if we have to even if we look mental. Love you mum." She stopped next to Nora and Diana's heart swelled with pride as her daughter bent low to her aunt's ear, taking a deep breath. "Nora! Love you!"  
  
Nora groaned, the depths of despair and misery as Sophie laughed and waved Jillian off to follow Violet.  
  
"Those two together, what a combination, absolute dynamite." Davey whistled through his teeth.   
  
"You sure you're fine to go along with them Davey? You don't have to, I mean I appreciate it but—"  
  
Sophie was cut off by Davey who smiled, shaking his head. "Nah you're fine. They need this and – don't tell my folks – but it's boring having nothing to do right waiting for school to go back. I'll be moaning soon but you forget how long it is until you're doing bugger all, watching Homes Under the Hammer in your pants, shouting at the telly."  
  
 _What a pair him and Nora would make_ , Diana thought now she had proof even if he was definitely too young for her, if not in years then in other ways. Her sister'd eat him alive, nice boy that he was, a teacher to boot from the sounds of it but if that didn't sum up Nora's time off then what did?  
  
"Anyway, since they're gone and they probably don't need to rehash it – I've left what I found poking through everything, circled a couple of names that need looking into first. I know I said I didn't think there was anyone but the more I thought about it, the more I realised yeah, yeah there's a few who could end up down a bad road if they weren't careful. If someone got to them. You hate to think that but…well, I should know." He sighed, a hand rubbing the back of his neck; Nora had looked up as he spoke, Sophie moving to touch his other arm gently.  
  
"Thanks, Davey, we're all—we're all rattled. No one wants to think it's anyone they know. Or one of us."  
  
"D'you want a tea or a coffee?" Diana asked, awkward with them all standing about as they were but Davey shook his head.  
  
"Nah, I'll have enough in me once we get up where we're going that I'll not sleep for days but thanks for offering. It's good to meet you both and to see you looking so—so flush Soph."  
  
"Fuck's sake!"  
  
Davey ducked the swat and laughed, escaping with Diana and Sophie following him to watch the car reverse down the drive, all three occupants waving as the rain picked up, blurry faces behind the wipers.   
  
"Vino bloody veritas." Nora proclaimed from behind them as Diana swore, jumping and grabbing the side table where Davey had left his research behind for them, having entirely missed her sister following them.  
  
"You gave me a heart attack you daftie! And it was gin, not wine. Away to your bed." To her horror, her cheeks were flushing as her voice rose in pitch, Nora's grin only growing wider as Sophie made aborted attempts at saying  _something_.  
  
"No no, away  _you_  go. Both of you. Took yous long enough I'll just be down here, telly loud enough to wake the dead."  
  
"Cheeky bitch."  
  
It was all Diana managed when Nora staggered – she was trying to swagger, bless her, but she was too hungover and hadn't had anything to eat yet – off to the kitchen leaving the two of them stood there, Sophie shaking with laughter, sinking down to sit on the stairs to rest her head on her knees.  
  
"Jesus wept I'm glad it's just me on my own, how've the pair of you not killed one another yet?"  
  
"With great difficulty." Diana said it with affection, squeezing in beside Sophie, head on her shoulder. "But sometimes she's got a good idea or two in her, it's why I keep her about."  
  
With a boldness that surprised her, Diana stood up, taking Sophie's hand in hers to lead her upstairs and into her bedroom, locking the door behind them just in time for Sophie to pin her up against it as everything else faded away to a background roar and then nothing.   
  


* * *

  
  
Davey stayed for his tea because that was the only sensible way to thank anyone for someone for volunteering themselves. And because Sophie agreed with Diana about a buffer when it came to Nora at the table so a sacrificial Davey would suit just fine. She'd make it up to him another day. Not that there was much to worry about in the end: the day out had been exactly what the girls had wanted and needed in equal measure from the sounds of it, voices rising over the top of one another, phones out and almost landing in plates. Unsurprisingly the anatomy museum had been involved; Sophie remembered being a teenager, and maybe she shouldn't have been so surprised because she'd been young once, she'd had a thing for the grisly side of everything.  
  
Nora, decidedly pale with a sheen to her at the talk, could've done without it so Sophie steered the conversation away when the woman let out a wet moan, head resting on her hand.   
  
"How's everyone else doing? I know I've not checked in as much as I said I would, just lost track of time a wee bit."  
  
"Everyone's fine, calmed down a bit once we all knew Violet was out of the woods and you were working on it. Having something to do and check up on, s'given people something to occupy themselves with."  
  
"Are they worried still?" Diana asked, up from the table to refill drinks, forcing another glass down in front of Nora that'd hopefully get the colour back in her cheeks. They'd checked on her more than once in the afternoon while she'd been sleeping it off, just to be safe, managing to make out a little through her mumbles about 'old' and 'liver slapping her'.  
  
"Course they are but we've all got each other and running about like headless chickens doesn't do anyone much good does it?" Davey shrugged, smiling fondly the same way Sophie did. That was family for you, whatever clumsy form the pack took.  
  
"Didn't you say…" Violet clicked her tongue, looking at Davey with eyes gone the size of dinner plates and he gave himself a shake.  
  
"Aye. Aye I did. So. Right."  
  
And then he said nothing, footering about with his cutlery to have it rattling against the plate until Jillian coughed, the girls looking at one another, shifting in their seats.  
  
"Davey?" Sophie prodded.  
  
"I was putting a few things together before I came down, I would've come down anyway, didn't think it was an over the phone type thing. Sort of thing that needed everyone involved in on it."  
  
"We'll just—"  
  
Jillian pushed her chair back and with Violet's help the table was cleared up minus the glasses, a bit more space that Sophie assumed they'd need at some point. Nora had forced herself to sit upright; Davey was chewing his lip, nothing to fidget with now that it had been dumped in the sink, Diana exchanging a glance with Sophie from her seat at head of the table where she just about managed to bump their knees together, the side of her mouth tilted up in encouragement. Violet and Jillian threw themselves back into their seats in a way that had everyone wincing but Sophie was resolved not to do any smothering when she was on the mend.  
  
"Some of you don't know—" He cut himself off, gaze landing heavily on Violet who looked back at him with a smile that faltered as she looked Sophie's way about the same time Davey did. "Does she…" he trailed off, a hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck.  
  
Sophie lifted her glass, mouth suddenly bone dry. "No," she croaked out, "not from me anyway."  
  
"Mum?" Violet asked, picking up that  _something_  was happening over the top of her head but there wasn't much chance for her to question further as Davey took a deep breath, blowing it out in an explosive sigh.  
  
"You're with friends," Diana said softly and Sophie smiled gratefully at her. "No judgement, whatever happens, and it stays here in this room."  
  
The tone brooked no argument though it did prompt a chorus of agreement from around that table that, under different circumstances, would've been funny.   
  
Davey swallowed. Curled and uncurled his hands. Sat himself up straight in his seat in a way that wasn't natural with his shoulders forced back in such a way that they couldn't curl forward into a rounded slouch that he might otherwise have slipped into. "I had a…let's call it a bad spell, there's other words for it but we'll go with that. Or a rough patch. A while back. This was years ago, I can't mind if you were even about then Vi and I was struggling to be me. Y'know. Who I am. What I am. Just—there was this anger in me, an ugliness. It was there all the time, me lashing out at everyone who got close, and I was drinking too much and all. Didnae look after myself." He took a great shuddering breath, groping blindly across the table until his hand found Sophie's. "I got kicked out the house, I don't blame my folks, I wasn't letting them in and you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. What else were they meant to do when there was me out at all hours fighting?"  
  
"Can I—" Nora hand clutched the air then dropped heavily to the table. "Were you born a werewolf or—"  
  
"Born. But you can struggle with it all the same. Trying to fit in with folk when you're going away to school and uni, making excuses sometimes and all that? Gets exhausting. Sorry," he looked over to Violet and Jillian, scrubbing at his face, "it's not what yous two want to be hearing, not everyone goes through it but—sometimes. Sometimes it happens. It gets to you. Gets to some folk worse than others. You don't feel right in your skin lying to folk but you can't just  _say_  either can you?  
  
"So my parents put me out – I've got brothers and sisters, they couldn't have that in the house and I wouldn't get help. I stayed with pals. Crashed on couches, spare rooms. Ended up out on the streets more than I should've—no, Violet, Violet don't." He let go of Sophie's hand to take Violet's when she sniffed, her bottom lip wobbling, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand as she sniffed.  
  
Sometimes, Sophie forgot how Davey had been like when they'd met. Or, not forgot exactly, but it was difficult to put those two people side by side when they looked nothing alike: Davey was still someone who didn't seem to fit in his body but it was the way of someone tall and lanky, not the way he'd flinched away, and he was healthy now, he had colour in his cheeks, he ate regular meals, slept properly. He'd gone on to be a teacher. Years ago she'd sat with him shivering and retching into a toilet worrying that he wouldn't make it through the night.   
  
"Sorry," Violet managed, scrubbing a hand over her face. "Sorry Davey I don't know—you've always been—"  
  
"That was all years ago, you didn't need to know it before. If it wasn't important now? I'd have waited a few more years to tell you. But you're no a wee lassie anymore and Jillian? This is important for you too." With a glance to Diana who nodded back at him, Davey squeezed Violet's hand and continued. "You know we try to help with others who need it, mostly it's people who get bitten because that's a hell of a shock to the system and you get these sort of pseudo-packs that form. Looking out for each other but it's not that stable, no one knows much if no one's born to it, they might not even know what they are I mean how many people  _honestly_  believe in werewolves? Some of them think they've got rabies or some shit like that.  
  
"Anyway, I'll skip me getting sorted, that's not what matters tonight. What matters is that I still do the outreach. I keep in touch with as many as I can, do what I can to help them out and get them back on their feet, get them integrated and show them that they can live any sort of life they want. Some of them can't. They can't and it breaks my heart but you can't force it. Some of them want to stay right off the grid. Now, it's when you two," he gestured to Sophie and Diana in turn with a hand, "brought up the islands, Inchcailloch, your search area, and I heard back from some people that there's someone missing."  
  
There was a thump that had everyone jumping and Diana swore sheepishly, reaching under the table to rub her knee. "Sorry, just—wasn't what I was expecting. Should I go grab the notes or do we move?"  
  
"There's more space here," Nora pointed out and that had Diana up and off, arriving back with laptops, notebooks, pens and the map.  
  
"Little help?"  
  
Sophie was the one to help her set up, Davey disappearing too to grab his own things out his bag that he'd brought with him and maybe to settle himself a moment as she had a look over at Violet who was still scrubbing her now puffy face, sipping her coke as Jillian spoke too softly for the adults at the table to hear them.  
  
"We didn't get as far through Inchcailloch as we wanted," Sophie said for Davey's benefit as she tapped the map once he was sat back down again. "It was bucketing, couldn't do it without one of us breaking an ankle or worse, but the islands seemed like the best bet."  
  
"Yeah, the person I'm thinking it is has a boat, tends to live on it, doesn't want much to do with anyone since he got bitten. He's…well I don't know what he was like before, obviously, but he's fragile."  
  
"Fragile how?" Nora asked, shifting to kneel in her chair so she could see and reach better, glass safely out of range as Jillian handed over her notebook and a pen, already scribbling away in it.  
  
Davey considered it, sucking his teeth. "Easily led, mind I only met him after so I can't speak to what he might've been like before but he'd go with whatever someone said no matter how mental it might've been. You see it in school, not always the ones that get bullied but they're no exactly pals with folk. Might think they are but they're…they're just good to have round for reasons."  
  
"You think he'd be in with a hunter?" It was Jillian who asked the question, and it wasn't the sort of thing a child should have to ask but children had been brought into it, brought into it by people  _they_  knew, a thought that soured Sophie's stomach, her mouth flooded with water brash.  
  
She regretted dinner. That it had come up after with a full belly.   
  
"I think that if a hunter said the right things to Kev," Davey let the name slip and Sophie closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to see anyone's faces, so she could picture that face in her mind better; not one she knew well but she'd met him. She'd met him, she could've spoken to him, and knowing that, that there was a chance he'd hard a part in it—  
  
"Mum?" Violet was shaking her arm, everyone looking round at her but it was Violet's big round eyes that held her attention. "Mum, don't cry—don't cry. Please."  
  
"I'm sorry," Sophie heaved in a breath – when the hell has she started crying in the first place? – and let go of Diana to wipe at her face, opening up her arms for Violet to scurry into them, her seat forced back. Violet was, by all rights, too big and too heavy to sit on her knee the way she did but she wanted her there, her daughter's face buried in her neck as she stroked her hair, the action calming her down as she swallowed thickly past the salt of her tears, glad that she couldn't make out the rest of the faces about the table. "I'm sorry—just—"  
  
Violet was saying something but she couldn't make it out, god she couldn't make anything out over the roaring in her ears combined with her ragged breathing until she could, wiping at her face again. There were only smiles, blurry as they were, and she reached out a hand again for Diana who took it without question, a squeeze that said  _I'm here_.  
  
"What did I miss? Sorry Jillian…just…I knew there was a chance it'd be someone I'd know but that threw me."  
  
"It's okay." Jillian smiled, tight-lipped and awkward as if she didn't know quite what to do around crying adults. Maybe she didn't. Maybe she'd been about too many of them lately for her liking. "Davey said that if a hunter spoke to him the right way then yeah, he probably would. If it was the right one."  
  
"I…I think I know someone who might. Going on that." Nora's voice was soft, filled with shame and regret as she dropped her pen to the diary. "I'll need to make a couple of phone calls but…but with what you've said? I think I know our other man."


	7. Chapter 7

Three days of ringing round, dodgy Skype connections, Davey and Nora trading off on playing go-between for their various groups to since everyone had come to a mutual decision that neither Sophie nor Diana could be fully trusted to do any sort of questioning, things were coming together. It had built up a head of steam now that no one could deny, all of them getting closer and closer to the answers they desperately craved and yet Diana couldn't stop the odd moments where her heart started to race, fluttering up in her throat. Snapping at Nora in particular because Nora always brought out the worst in her and it was easier to ask her sister's forgiveness when it came down to it in the end. Not that it excused it but her temper frayed dangerously without her noticing it; she'd never been given to tears but lashing out? That she could do in spades. Sophie had gone quiet, knuckles white about pens or the edge of the table, pushing her food around her plate. The girls had picked up on it too.  
  
They weren't children anymore, not that you could shield children from everything anyway. They picked up on plenty as it was.  
  
Behind the curtains the light flared, gravel crunching to signal Nora had finally come home from a late trip out to continue her mission that had grown arms and legs alongside Davey's: they might have names but in the grand scheme of things it didn't do them much good when they couldn't find hide nor hair of them for all their searching.   
  
"How many times do I have to get them to go to bed? They're in the same room, we've let them have that." Sophie opened Diana's door with a huff, stopping to tug her dressing gown off since the heating wasn't on meaning the place was frozen, Diana folding back a corner of the duvet for her that she slipped under in a hurry. "Can't even try to be subtle about it."  
  
"Doubt we were much better at their age, didn't have phones or laptops did we?"  
  
"Aye but they've got headphones and the splitter things, they could at least try to pretend couldn't they?"  
  
The front door opened and closed. Nora kicked off her shoes. Tossed her keys into the bowl. Diana shimmied down another inch to be nose to nose with Sophie, slipping her hands up and under her clothes to warm her back that had gotten chilled in the time Sophie had been out of bed; when Sophie's feet tucked themselves been Diana's calves she didn't begrudge her. She'd volunteered to be the one to get up and be the unpopular mum for the night.   
  
"We'll need to keep it down then," Diana closed the gap between them, brushing her nose against Sophie's before kissing her slowly, lazy from the warmth and the late hour – it had to be after midnight, closing in on one in the morning by now – until they were both gasping. "Don't want a lecture in the morning."  
  
"I—"  
  
Whatever Sophie was about to say was interrupted by a stair creaking loudly punctuated by Nora's soft curse that had them both giggling, trying to hush one another.  
  
"Stop. Stop it," Diana urged despite barely being able to get the words out herself as they listened to Nora's painstaking progress together. She wondered if the girls were doing the same in Jillian's room.  
  
"I can't help it, my heart nearly fell out my arsehole there. Christ." Sophie wheezed and it put Diana in mind of a goose, setting her off worse, face turned to the pillow until Sophie turned it back, finding her lips again for a barely there kiss, both of them shaking.   
  
"Every time she tries to sneak up these stairs she hits that one and it goes to shit," Diana whispered back. "Here, gie me your feet, they're frozen and my thighs are frozen now too."  
  
"Well I can warm  _those_  up no problem."  
  
"Not if I'm worrying about your toes falling off, c'mon."  
  
"Oh well if you insist." With an arm thrown dramatically over her eyes, Sophie allowed Diana to grab hold of her feet, chafing the warmth back into them briskly until they weren't a danger to either of them any longer though, selfishly, mostly Diana who didn't resent being the human heater tonight but not if they were doing more than sleeping. "Pure spoilt here."  
  
"If someone warming your feet up is being spoilt then you've lived a hard life." Diana rolled onto her back, tugging Sophie with her so she was on top, a thigh between hers, sighing as she made herself comfortable, Sophie's lips on her neck. "Why'd we meet when we've got a bad summer when we're stuck under the covers like it's the dead of winter?"  
  
"Don't worry; we'll warm up soon enough."  
  
"Promises—ah fuck!" Diana clapped a hand over her mouth; Sophie had nipped her collarbone as she'd slid her hands up and under the t-shirt she'd worn to bed, finding her nipples and she laughed, Sophie's shoulders shaking where Diana's other hand found them.  
  
"Ssh," Sophie muttered against her skin, "you'll wake the children."  
  
Diana cursed under her breath, reaching to tug the covers up enough to cover them before she started to shimmy out of her t-shirt before she ended up trapped, shivering as Sophie trailed her fingers up her ribs as she helped, kissing up between her breasts, nipping at the hollow of her throat once it was over her head and tossed on the floor before they tackled her pyjama bottoms and underwear, skimming them down together. "Can't help noticing," Diana managed after stealing a kiss, a hand on Sophie's chin since Sophie was content to do the work for the moment, "that I'm the one in the nuddy the now."  
  
"There's no harm in looking for a minute is there?"  
  
"We're under a duvet, you can't see anything."  
  
"You know what I mean, shush, you complaining?"  
  
"There's two people here, I want to see you too if that's what we're calling it."  
  
"You could help."  
  
"Maybe I don't want to be doing all the work?" Diana kissed her again to cut off any protests, rolling her hips and Sophie moaned, making an aborted move to follow her before she stopped herself, Diana arching an eyebrow at her.  
  
"No. No you've been wound up and we don't know what's going to happen so…so  _you_  are going to lie back and enjoy yourself. If that's all right with you." Sophie was watching her, thumbs rubbing circles on her hips and Diana knew she could say no, that they could stop, they could change up whatever she had planned and it wouldn't be a problem (god there was something to be said for being older and just being able to  _talk_  wasn't there?)  
  
Smiling, she nodded, and Sophie grinned brightly back at her, leaning up to kiss her properly until they were both breathless before she kissed her way back down, Diana's toes curling, back arching, heat pooling in the small of her back as she bit her lip, mindful of the rest of the household and walls that were never as soundproof as you wanted them to be. Still, she couldn't resist as Sophie nipped at the junction of hip and thigh, "well, if you insist," and it was worth it to have Sophie shaking with laughter between her thighs, Diana's hand stroking her scalp.  
  


* * *

  
  
"Fun night?"   
  
Nora was still in her pyjamas with a faded hoodie thrown over the top, watching the birds outside the window attacking the feeders that Violet had gone out and filled first thing before she and Jillian had scarpered to do 'werewolf things' that apparently didn't involve 'old people'. Sophie didn't know if she was supposed to be insulted or not, or if there was some sort of code she was missing out on but things were gathering pace so they could be excused and there probably  _were_  questions that Violet was more equipped to answer than Sophie was, or Davey, or anyone else. Jillian and Violet were friends now.  
  
God she'd need to say something to Violet. Her and Diana hadn't decided on a plan about that, other things had taken precedence but now, alone in the kitchen with Nora asking her a question like that? Maybe they should've come up with some sort of plan.  
  
"Soph?" Nora waved a hand, crunched noisily on her toast as crumbs spilt down her front that she brushed away half-heartedly. "You awake there?"  
  
"Sorry, I heard, just away in a wee dream world there. Heard you coming in by the way," she weighed it up for a moment and thought about it, if she was making a mistake but it was morning, her brain not firing on all cylinders. "D'you make that much noise out hunting? You'd wake the dead because you gave me a fright."  
  
Nora laughed, groping behind her for the mug at her elbow. "Sorry, I tried. I failed. I never remember which stair it is and we've been saying – actually  _dad_  said and all – that the stairs'll get fixed so they don't do that then no one does that. Jillian can do it."  
  
"Anyone told Jillian that?"  
  
"Reckon it's in the will, the endless list of jobs no one gets round to in old houses you get landed with." Nora slurped her tea noisily, crunched her toast. Sophie turned back to the birdfeeders, dunnocks and house sparrows darting about under a bush, the glossy starlings squabbling and shrieking amongst themselves with a solitary robin high up singing their little heart out, ready to fight with any challenger. "Anyway, you never answered the question: fun night?"  
  
Sophie glanced over at Nora but she was still eating her breakfast, too sleepy to give away much. "Yeah. Yeah it was thanks for asking, girls took forever to get to bed but if I was in their shoes I don't think I'd be much better, y'know?"  
  
"I'd be climbing the walls or stomping about the place, they're both…they're good lassies, well-dragged as mam'd say. And has. At length." She heaved out a gusty sigh, a ten mile stare levelled at the wall and through it that had Sophie laughing.  
  
"You get on all right yourself? We were going to wait up for you but it got later and later and we decided to turn in."  
  
"Ended up driving round a whole bunch of spots where I thought him and his pals used to be, checked in a bunch of his locals, even got the numbers of the old guys he goes fishing and angling with but they've no seen him. I believe the barman and the rest of them when they said no, not so sure about the rest but he's always been a bit funny." Nora turned around to face the window too, leaning her elbows on the counter same as Sophie as she finished her toast and tossed back the last of her tea.   
  
"Funny how? I mean, you said a bit the night Davey said he thought it was Kevin but keeping track of everything's been—" she flapped her hands, glad that Nora laughed.   
  
"So," Nora took a deep breath then blew it out slowly, "we did the whole thing about different strokes for different folks and Hugh's…Hugh's old fashioned about a lot of things. That sounds like a cop out, I mean, it is in a way, I can't knock that he's had a hard life, it doesn't excuse how he is but it explains some of it. Him and dad were pals when they were younger, grew up knowing all this then one day he lost his wife to a werewolf attack, someone new who bit her."  
  
Sophie bit her lip, reaching for Nora's shoulder to squeeze and finding herself with the other woman leaning heavily against her, sighing as she rubbed her face. "How'd she die?" She asked after a moment's silence where the shower upstairs turned on, Diana finally sloughing off the sheets and getting ready to face the day.   
  
Nora's face pulled into a tight mirthless smile, her lips thin and white. "Killed herself."  
  
" _Jesus_."  
  
"Hugh never told her what he did or anything – this was back before me and Diana came along – and I don't know if it was because he was  _that_ old fashioned about everything, if he thought he was protecting her, if it was both, or—anyone I talk to about it has different ideas about it. Our folks think he was brought up believing you didn't get women involved in things like that and there was no talking him round on it, he was horrified about mam being a hunter; even with women being hunters for centuries he belonged to a certain strain of family where the man went out with the gun and the knives and the traps, and the woman kept house and didn't know what he was doing."   
  
"How'd he explain the hunting then?"  
  
"Oh he did hunt, pheasant, rabbit, deer, did his fishing too so if he was away oot then he'd come back wi' something but…but she got attacked by a wolf and she wasnae daft. Dogs and wolves don't look alike. Wolves aren't about in Scotland these days let alone then. When he tried telling her…" Nora broke off, swallowing as Sophie continued to rub between her shoulders, small circles growing wider and wider until they weren't up by her ears. "You know mam never told us for years? I mean both of us made the choice, they said why but—"  
  
"Take your time, there's no rush," Sophie wished they weren't standing now, or that she had a drink for Nora but she didn't want to leave her to get one just in case.  
  
Leaning heavily against the counter so she was bent over it, Nora took a great shuddering breath. "So Hugh, he tries to explain it all and she - I keep saying she, her name was Valerie, but any time she comes up they all call her Val so we'll stick to Val – gets one of his guns and shoots herself. Hugh…went off the deep end for a while, I mean you can see why. He blamed himself for what happened and he took to the drink until he got himself sorted out but he went reclusive, stayed away from an awful lot of folk. Think I can count the number of times I've met him on one hand."  
  
"Is he…there's not a nice way to ask what I'm going to ask but I have to: does he kill werewolves?"  
  
"Honestly? Probably. He blamed them as much as he blamed himself and it got all twisted around. He got all fire and brimstone style on me last time I bumped into him because I don't comport myself – who even talks like that? – with any shred of decency or respect, and Diana's no better. He never gets crude but you wish he would."  
  
"You talking about old Shug?" Diana appeared at the door, hair wrapped in a towel and her arms folded. Sophie smiled at her, Nora pushed herself up to stand again. "Didn't mean to sleep in that late."  
  
"It's the summer, 'sides, thought you needed it," Sophie replied before she could stop herself.  
  
Nora's gaze darted between the two of them, her mouth dropping before she smiled. "It  _was_  a fun night then."  
  
"You don't miss a beat, we're talking about Shug." Diana stuck the kettle back on, making a face at Nora who rolled her eyes but stretched an arm out to hand over her empty cup.  
  
"Wait, is he Shug or Hugh?" Sophie asked, frowning at the pair of them.  
  
"Depends who you talk to, I think he's mostly Shug these days with the crowd he hangs about wi', it's only the folk who knew him before who knew him as Hugh," Nora explained.  
  
"Gotcha."  
  
"He's an arsehole." The opening and closing of the fridge door punctuated Diana's words, even Nora looking taken aback at it. "We had words before, don't start, there's no use getting upset over it now but he didn't have anything good to say about you and say I should keep you in line over who you were getting in bed with. His words, no mine."  
  
" _What_!" Nora's mouth puckered and Sophie regretted where she was, stuck between the two of them as Diana bustled around the kitchen without looking over at her sister, opening and closing this cupboard and that in her quest for her breakfast with the milk tucked in the crook of her elbow. "No, no you don't get to just go saying things like that and arse about with your porridge, what d'you mean?"  
  
"He said you were a bad influence on Jillian and if I had any sense I'd keep you far away from her before you'd corrupt her or whatever backwards pish he was peddling then." There was a clatter, Diana setting down a bowl, spoon, and the milk heavily on the table as she took a step in front of Nora who'd shrugged off Sophie's restraining hand on her elbow. "I told him where he could stick it and if I heard him agitating then I'd know where to come looking first—"  
  
"And you didn't think to bring it up—"  
  
"D'you no think there's guilt enough in this house the now?"  
  
It was throwing water on the chip pan fire, Sophie just about getting a grip on Nora before she could lunge, hauling her back and getting a stray elbow to the ribs for her troubles as Diana swore, dragging both hands down her face. Thank god neither of the girls were around to see them all embarrassing themselves like they were just now, or, god forbid, getting in amongst it themselves though Sophie was sure they'd probably behave better than three grown women still not dressed for the day all talking over the top of one another until Sophie cleared her throat. It got her two shamefaced stares, Nora flushed across her cheeks and the tips of her ears, breathing heavily, Diana with her arms folded.  
  
"Sit at the table, I'm not refereeing some Ibrox bullshit at this time in the morning, behave yourselves. Sit." As they moved, she pointed to Diana, hand outstretched. "Gies the milk, I'll make that tea you interrupted."  
  
If she muttered  _animals_  under her breath then that was neither here nor there, something the pair of them deserved as they sat there, someone – Diana she assumed – turning cutlery over and over until she came back. Breakfast could wait a little longer now, no one was in a desperate rush.  
  
"Without anyone going right for the jugular," Sophie began as she set three mugs down in the middle of the table, taking the seat next from Diana, opposite Nora who'd kept a little extra distance between herself and her sister, "can you properly explain the Hugh thing so we're all on the same page here and so I know exactly how this fits in with Kevin. Because we need to be sure about that."  
  
"How does Hugh even know anything in the first place to go and—" Nora growled, grasping at the air with disgust as if that would help her find the words, "and—and just throw about accusations like that?"  
  
"Because he's a paranoid old bastard who keeps tabs on plenty of folk because he's had no other life since his wife died and that's longer than you or I have been alive?" Diana wrapped her hands around her mug, shrugging one shoulder. "That's the thing about him: he knows plenty of folk and plenty of folk know him, how else do you keep tabs on him? You find out who he's been about. He's got a routine even if he's prickly. Plenty of people know an old man like him. They write it off. Bygone generation or whatever excuse they've got to excuse how he is, look, aye, he had it rough but well if  _dad_  says he brought some of it down on his own head…"  
  
Sophie glanced between them with the knowledge that she was missing something when it came to their father. She could ask later, if it mattered though she didn't think it did, not overly much. That tended to be a thing about parents, even as it started her wondering if either sister took after one in particular, if Jillian prior to this since you couldn't use trauma to judge, took after Diana or Iona or if being around Nora so much had seen her aunt rubbing off on her.   
  
"With everything's that been said, why would Hugh work with a werewolf?" Sophie asked since it seemed, to her at least, to be the most relevant question to be asking after having the man laid bare the way he'd been so far this morning. She had little reason to doubt either Diana or Nora with all the work everyone had been doing over such a such short span of time together but there were pieces she couldn't fit together yet.  
  
Diana's stomach moaned, long and plaintive, morning whale song.  
  
"I can't listen to that, you attend to your breakfast and I'll talk." Nora's face was scrunched up and by now Sophie knew her well enough to know when she was trying to hold in a laugh.  
  
"How gracious of you," Diana muttered but she was smiling, her chair shoved back as she clattered about with cupboard doors, cereal boxes, milk, Nora sipping her tea all the while  
  
"I don't know where to start," Nora admitted finally, drumming her fingers against her mug, a staccato tattoo. "Hugh…Hugh's the guy who could and would work with anyone and everyone if it got  _his_  job done in the end. Which is why, I'm guessing, he isn't keen on my being pally with you or Davey or anyone like you. But maybe you need to check in with Davey, actually he probably wants you to ring him he might've said but I'm—" she yawned, rubbed her face and took another slurp of her tea. It made her point. "Anyway, if Hugh could get a werewolf to hurt people then he proves himself right: werewolves are dangerous, his whole view was right all along, it wasn't his fault."  
  
"And Kevin is fragile enough to be manipulated."  
  
It would've stung less if Nora had slapped her, only a distant awareness of Diana returning to the table as the words left Sophie's mouth, heartsick at the idea of it. She hadn't realised her eyes were blurring until a hand had caught one of hers as the other rubbed at her face, gulping air until it passed, until her head stopped spinning.  
  
"I'm all right, I'm all right, sorry I just—fuck." She swallowed, sniffed wetly and squeezed Diana's hand a little too hard but there wasn't a complaint, and for that she was grateful.  
  
"It can't be easy, we're not hearing it from your side but this is the person he is. It's why we need to try to find Kevin." Nora smiled, leaning across the table to set her hand atop both Diana and Sophie's.   
  
"He's got a boat," Diana added around a mouthful of cereal, turning her head away from Sophie as she chewed. "Means we probably weren't completely wrong about the Loch and the islands."  
  
"Course he's got a Loch, dodgy Hugh and his dodgy jakey angling club who've never caught a fish in their lives." Nora snorted, throwing back the last of her tea with a roll of her eyes and a significant look for Sophie's benefit. "It's for spying on folk and getting the gossip because he's—"  
  
"A dodgy bastard?" Sophie guessed, the bubble of a laugh catching tight on the way up.   
  
"I think he used to do boat tours," Diana said quietly and across the table Nora choked.  
  
" _Christ_! Why am I only hearing this now?"  
  
"It's not my fault you didn't spend Christmas cooking with dad getting all the stories of back in the day when him and mam were young."  
  
"I can't even imagine Loch tours with Shug on his tug."  
  
It took supreme effort for Sophie to hold her face still, even then there were cracks. "Phrasing."  
  
"Probably thought he was keeping us safe from kelpies or each uisges, bet he's got a sideline in all those theories too, mad old bastard. You two done with those?" Diana pointed to their mugs, taking them when they nodded to dump in the sink, running the tap.   
  
"I'm away to ring Davey then, you should probably get dressed."  
  
"I'll get on that. Nora?"  
  
"I've got a few more people to try to get hold of but if I can't by tea time then I think we make plans to head off again, we're burning time now he's made an opening gambit."  
  
Nora cleared off first with a foray into the biscuit tin to make off with some Tunnock's teacakes (and apparently no matter how old you were you never stopped the habits of hiding things up your sleeves on the way) as Sophie lingered, watching Diana washing the dishes that had been piled in the sink, humming tunelessly to herself, hair escaping the towel, curling damply down the back of her neck.   
  
"Hey," Diana turned eventually, a half-smile over the shoulder, "everything okay? I know that was heavy but I'm here."  
  
"I know. Just. Later, okay? I need to ring Davey."  
  
"Later, promise." A soapy hand reached out, caught Sophie by the chin for a kiss and sent her away singing the Fairy jingle.  
  


* * *

  
  
"Yep, no, no I get that…has she—" Sophie's door cracked open, Violet peering round it; before she could disappear again she beckoned her in, the door toed shut before the bed bounced as Violet threw herself back on it, arms over her head.  
  
 _Who is it?_  She mouthed, head lifted in the way that had Sophie's aching in sympathy just looking at it.   
  
A hand covering her phone, she glanced over with a distracted smile, "Davey—no not you, Vi's here," she said as she took her hand away, turning back to the notebook again, scribbling away in it as she nodded, the bed shifting as Violet jiggled about. "Right, okay, well keep in touch. Take care and send everyone our love."  
  
"Bye Davey!" Violet almost shouted it, just short and probably more for everyone else in the house – Nora was 'resting her eyes' – since she was fond of trying to deafen Sophie when she could.  
  
A tinny 'bye-bye Vi' echoed as she ended the call, dropping her phone on the pillow, turning to face her daughter who was sat cross-legged and all smiles, expectant. "Davey sends his love."  
  
"Of course he does,  _I'm_  his favourite."  
  
"Oh you don't know about the plan me and Diana've hatched to get him and Nora married off, just you wait."  
  
"I'm sure she'll be thrilled about him strolling about in his pants scratching his oxters like that's acceptable behaviour, still smelling of Lynx."  
  
"Plenty of things happen when you spend time in a car together," Sophie said without knowing why she said that because Violet wasn't stupid, and with the way her eyebrows raised, the little  _oh ho ho_  she let out? Proof positive. "I never got to ask if they got up to anything—"  
  
"No no no that's Davey that's…no. It's weird. I've seen him. In his pants. And thinking it's acceptable to use three-in-one shampoo, conditioner and shower gel. Nora's fun and cool she can't drag up some sort of reprobate."  
  
"Check in with Diana then or Jillian, I'm sure they've horror stories plenty."  
  
"But about cars…" Violet sprawled forward onto her stomach, chin in her hands, legs kicking the air. "You and Diana were alone in a car weren't you? D'you fancy her?"  
  
"Violet!" She hadn't meant to shout, trying to keep the embarrassment at her shock out of being asked out of the blue from her voice but it was a lost cause, her cheeks already burning as if she was little more than Violet's age herself again, being asked if she had a boyfriend or a girlfriend those first mortifying times.   
  
"I can ask! Not just me, Jillian wants to know too!" Violet smiled in satisfaction, still swinging her legs as she waited. And wait she would. Sophie was sure of it. "You and Diana sitting in a tree—"  
  
"Jesus I didn't know you lot still sang that, I feel auld now. Look it's…we don't know what it is but fine you're old enough and you already know her: I like her, we've…right fine you want to know well I wasn't the only one sleeping in a different bed last night."  
  
"Mum!" Scandalised, Violet swatted at Sophie's knee but all too soon she collapsed forwards, giggling furiously, the sound muffled with her face pressed against the blankets until she had to roll over and breathe. Pink-cheeked, she rolled around onto her back, her tangled under her head and Sophie reached out to stroke through it, fanning it out.   
  
"Did you think I closed up shop after I had you because I hate to break it to you—"  
  
"No, I knew you had dates and all that but no one seemed to stick much but maybe we both sort of thought…you seemed to be looking at each other a bit. And Jillian said…well it doesn't matter, you sorted it out so you clearly aren't two hopeless old—"  
  
"Watch it," Sophie interrupted but without any heat, how much better had she been at that age anyway?  
  
"Ladies," Violet finished, undeterred, shrugging lightly. "You deserve it y'know?"  
  
"Still don't know what 'it' is."  
  
Violet frowned – funny to see it from this angle with her young smooth forehead – as she inched herself closer and up so her head was by Sophie's knee. "I thought you did at a certain point."  
  
"I hate to break it to you Vi but you don't magically figure it all out by a certain age, you're just as confused about most things when you're my age you just hopefully have the experience to help you muddle through it better and the resources behind you."  
  
"Oh. So long as you're happy. I mean she's pretty brilliant."  
  
"That she is. Is this why you creeping in? Coming to interrogate my love life?"  
  
"Not completely, I wanted to know what was going on last night, some of us young folk were the first up this morning."  
  
"Ah yes the mysterious werewolf thing – do I get to know what they were?"  
  
"Transformations and things, just, look it's a lot to take in. You know how you don't get all the period things from the school nurse, or your mum, you get stuff from friends and googling yeah? Like that. But what happened? Did Davey say more?"  
  
Even with Violet well on the mend as she was now, the image of that horrific night overlaid itself on the here and now: scared, in pain, bloodied, the all-consuming panic that had throttled Sophie in the car, in those first endless hours.  _She's fine. Don't worry about tomorrow until tomorrow._ Violet had been part of all this from the beginning, more than anyone else save Jillian she had a right to know what was going on, what they'd found out and so Sophie took a deep breath more for herself and nodded. "We're sure about who shot you and I was passing on everything Nora and Diana know about him to Davey. Him and Nora were off looking for Kevin last night but no sign."  
  
"That's not good."  
  
"No it's not and there's no sign of Hugh or Shug, depends who you talk to from what I can gather, either."  
  
"Double not good." Violet pursed her lips, scooting herself over to evict the notebook out of Violet's lap with a gentle headbutt. "Does it make sense, like, why he'd pick Kevin?"  
  
"Sadly, yes." Violet said nothing for a long time, mouth still pursed but twisting side to side as she thought it through, deep breaths in and out through her nose. "You all right?"  
  
"Mhm."  
  
"You need a minute?"  
  
"Yep." Violet's voice was tight – was Sophie imagining that her eyes were watery?  _Don't crowd her_ , she thought, still stroking her hair as Violet fidgeted about until she sat up, scrubbing her face with the heels of her hands, arms open for a cuddle. "S'not fair." It was a mumble into Sophie's shoulder as she grabbed hold of her jumper, clutching it tight.  
  
She hadn't heard Violet say that yet. Maybe she had to someone else – in all likelihood the first days of her and Jillian tucked away and only emerging to eat and sleep had been all about that – but not to Sophie. And she understood that, she did, but it didn't lessen the sting, didn't make it any less heartbreaking to hear it, nor did it do much to force down the anger that kept simmering any time she thought about Hugh, or Kevin's situation, or any of it.  
  
All she could do was hold Violet who didn't cry but made quiet noises until she stopped, face flushed when she finally sat back again, reaching for Sophie's notebook.  
  
"Catch me up?" She asked and Sophie nodded. Better than being useless or festering wasn't it?


	8. Chapter 8

"Haw."  
  
Diana turned around, surprised to see Jillian tramping out in her boots, still a size too big for but just about working the way she'd loosely laced them up, in Nora's jacket since the weather hadn't decided to remember that it was summer, a chill lingering in the air that necessitated more than just t-shirts.  
  
"Haw yourself, coming to help?" Diana nodded at the coal scuttle she'd been filling, unsurprised that Jillian snorted at her, looking over to the axe and the logs waiting to be cut.  
  
"Can I…"  
  
 _Absolutely not_  sat on the tip of Diana's tongue, her mind filled with visions of fingers being lopped off, blood spurting everywhere in great gushing gouts even if that wasn't how it worked at all (too many dodgy crime shows and bad horror films, she had to get back to something a little more relaxing in the evenings if this was where her brain went now) but that was unfair. Jillian wasn't a baby or an idiot. Diana had been the one sent outside to go chop kindling at her age hadn't she? Protesting at the unfairness of it all when Nora had been allowed to stay inside whinging about doing the washing-up when that meant hot soapy water, not being out in the cold. In the dark sometimes with just the outside light or a torch propped up.  
  
"All right, but you need to watch me and pay attention, I'll have a heart attack if you end up with more stitches."  
  
"Trust me, I don't fancy more scars, bad enough having to go back to school after the summer and tell everyone some mad dug bit me."  
  
Diana dusted her hands off, reaching for the axe and the wood on the way to the old tree stump that had served as a good sturdy chopping block for as long as she could remember and then some, guiding Jillian through it until she had a decent rhythm going. Maybe her daughter was having fun with it. Or if not fun then just the pleasure that came from something almost mindless and repetitive with purposeful destruction; there was probably a word for it that she couldn't think of right now.   
  
"Enjoying yourself?" She asked as she took a seat to gather the kindling, knowing they'd not need to cut any for a good long while after this but not about to interrupt Jillian now.  
  
"If I do this do I have to carry in the coal?"  
  
"No, same rules as cooks don't do the washing up."  
  
"Then yes, I'm enjoying myself."  
  
Diana laughed and Jillian set down the axe, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, cheeks flushed enough that she wriggled out of the jacket and tied it about her middle; clad just in a t-shirt the faded bite-mark was plain to see, the beginning of a scar she'd be carrying for the rest of her life now that it was beginning to lose the worst of its early ragged edges, any other infections marring it cleared up and over. Jillian noticed her staring and she looked away, sighing quietly.  
  
"What dog could've bitten me like that? I feel bad saying it's a dog but it's not going to look like anything else is it?"  
  
"You'd need to ask Soph or Violet, they'd know best but any of them that I've seen still look like bites. You're out of luck I think if someone knows their bites not that it'd be an issue at school so…big dog. German Shepherd maybe, something like that. You've got a few more weeks to decide, we can all figure out a good easy story or one that's as dramatic as you like." Diana had rung Iona up about them, just in case to keep stories straight in the event it came up and fortunately everyone was on the same page: Jillian's decision the whole way.  
  
"Dog bite girl, great, that'll be me."  
  
"Oh you're not ginger so you've got that."  
  
"Gran said that." Jillian picked up the axe, getting back to work with an air of smugness about her as she worked. "Said you came home crying once—"  
  
"In  _primary_  school. I was the only ginger."  
  
" _Strawberry blonde_."  
  
"Well now I know where Nora gets it from, she's our mother."  
  
"That is…a disturbing image I won't ever get out my head, thanks mum."  
  
"That's your own fault. So, not that I'm ungrateful for the help because Nora has worse sleeping habits than you when school's out but what brings you out here? I thought you'd be with Violet? You've seemed attached at the hip."  
  
Jillian waited until she was done with her kindling, dusting her hands then the stump to take a seat, the axe propped up next to her with exaggerated care only to catch it hurriedly when she knocked it and it swung to the ground, a panicked 'oop' sound escaping her. And then, not unlike a cat caught falling off a narrow ledge en route somewhere, it was as if it never happened, her cheeks already pink and shining from her hard work.  
  
"We're not always creeping about up to no good together, sometimes we do stuff alone and she wanted to find out what was going on from last night – Nora was barely awake when we were both up and you and Sophie were nowhere to be seen." It was lightly accusatory; her chin lifted up as she spoke and gestured about. "I had some werewolf questions, just, stupid stuff but I wanted to check and I didn't want to ask Sophie because they were stupid."  
  
"Sophie wouldn't laugh at anything you asked," Diana said softly, reaching out to Jillian then forcing herself to pull back since she'd only leave black handprints on her and that probably wouldn't be welcomed.   
  
"Did you always ask gran everything?" Jillian asked and Diana shut her mouth sharply when she went to reply because they both knew the answer to that one. "It's still—like it's not been a whole month so there's—I try not to think about it and I forget but then I'll be doing something and then it's like a car alarm going off in the middle of the night. Only I'll be brushing my teeth or watching the telly or eating dinner and thinking I need to act normally."  
  
"You don't. You can tell us."  
  
"I know but, like, it's just—" She grabbed the air, fingers clawing at it and Diana only nodded. She understood that, not wanting to say more out of fear of patronising her. "I can't say everything because the words aren't there."  
  
"I get it. But when they are, you can come to me. Even if it's the middle of the night or I'm not about, I'll always have my phone."  
  
"Don't know about the middle of the night," Jillian muttered, looking off into the trees where a bird was singing merrily.  
  
Diana stared at her. Let her daughter  _know_  she was being stared at but all that happened was that Jillian sucked in her bottom lip, closing her eyes slowly, breathing in through her nose, then out. "Excuse me?" Diana asked finally when she trusted her own voice.  
  
"You heard me," Jillian replied in a voice far more suited to Nora of all the people. "You know you're just as bad as mum."  
  
Now, Iona probably had even less time to meet people than Diana but she had maybe because she was an awful lot of things that Iona was, or London just had a much bigger pool of people to meet than elsewhere, or whatever other reasons there were and Diana did  _know_  this story. The frantic phone call with Iona's then-girlfriend (two girlfriends back, engaged again now, invites pending) wheezing with laughter in the background as Diana had said  _I love you as a friend and co-parent and you absolutely deserve this, good luck_  before she'd hung up to tell Nora.  
  
If she'd ever believed in karma, this was it.  
  
"What are you talking about?"  
  
"I mean I didn't walk in on anything," Jillian shuddered in exaggeration at that one, "but who else'd be giving you love bites?"  
  
"Fuck." She didn't mean to curse though she and Nora did let them slip since Jillian wasn't a wee lassie anymore but she hadn't noticed, Jillian's hand catching her wrist before she could slap a filthy hand in search of it.  
  
"So…were you going to tell us because we did wonder about the two of you."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"When did you last go on a date? No, don't, we'll be here past Christmas, you never go on dates, or out, I don't get why you're a stunner," Diana's cheeks burned at her daughters words, "and you're class. You're fun, you're smart, I know your job is weird and this is weird but you don't need to go spilling all that right away. You could ease someone into it."  
  
"I wasn't planning on meeting someone when all this happened to you."  
  
"Who cares? Isn't it a bit romantic?"  
  
"I'm going through your Netflix history, it's rotting your head if you think it's romantic."  
  
"Least it's not Outlander, those books are on the shelf here—"  
  
"Don't you dare," Diana cut her off – and those were  _her_  mum's, not something she wanted to get into today or ever – as she stood and hefted the coal. "Look it's a new thing and there's all this going on but do I have your seal of approval?"  
  
"Sophie's great and she actually deserves you so yes."  
  
"Fantastic, now bring in some of that kindling I'm freezing after sitting out here this long and we're scaring the birds off."  
  
"Speak for yourself, probably thinking you were someone's breakfast."  
  
Nora's influence, it had to be Nora's influence but Jillian was laughing and joking in a way Diana hadn't thought possible at the outset of all of this, those early terrible hours after she'd been bitten, lying bleeding and shaking, IVs and fluorescent lighting. Diana's pride could take the knocks if it was a reminder of her daughter's happiness.  
  


* * *

  
  
"Nora's act as the wounded betrayed party was a thing of beauty."  
  
They were in Diana's bed again – larger than the guest bedroom Sophie had been provided with, further away from everyone else and they hadn't discussed it much, just ended up together again – as they made themselves comfortable, no frozen toes scrambling for warm spots tonight. Sophie was in a flannel top, wide neckline, a tempting expanse of collarbone bared for Diana to nip at if she wanted to but she could restrain herself; there was a later, wasn't there? They'd promised and then the day had caught up with everyone because work had intruded for her and she'd had to have the other half of her real life take up her time, back late enough to grab tea when everyone else was done by the time she got back but they'd lit the fire at least.  
  
Summer and having the fire lit, bloody weather.  
  
Sophie nudged her with a heel and she nodded. "She's had plenty of practice," she replied, giving in to press a kiss to that warm soft skin as she rolled onto her side. "How'd it come up anyway?"  
  
"Fielded a double barrel inquisition about everything, quite the investigators we've raised."  
  
"I'm going through Jillian's Netflix history," Diana said. Again. Though she was probably to blame for some of what showed up there no doubt.   
  
There was a laugh that jostled her, a kiss to the top of her head, fingers tangling in her hair. "Got the seal of approval and Violet wants you to know you've got hers but I'm not too sure about Nora. Oh and Vi's not sure about our plans for Nora and Davey."  
  
"Tough titties, she's my sister I get to dictate her life," Diana muttered into Sophie's mouth when her head was tipped back so Sophie could kiss her, and she was tired from a day on the phone, a day she hadn't planned for and now left her drained, a heaviness threatening to drag her eyelids down. "We never had that chat."  
  
"We can have it in the morning, you need your sleep."  
  
"No, we should have it while it's still today, don't know what'll happen tomorrow do we?"  
  
"No. No we don't." Sophie sighed, sitting up in bed and Diana moved with her. "God today hasn't even been the longest day but somehow I can't believe that just now," the arm wrapped around Diana's shoulders moved to better gesture to the room at large, "and this morning and everything between happened on the same day."  
  
"D'you speak to Davey?"  
  
"Aye, I caught him up on everything, Vi too. No one was…" Sophie's face took on that pinched look of unhappiness, eyes fixed on the wall across the room instead of anything closer as Diana wrapped herself closer, resting a hand on her side as her ribs rose and fell. "I don't think anyone was  _surprised_  by what they heard. Upset. Has—D'you miss when they're wee and it's easy to fix the problem? Magic plaster and a kiss on it and that's that? When them saying it's not fair is about having to eat all of their peas or brush their teeth? How just because they did all their homework doesn't mean they can stay up past their bedtime on a school night?"  
  
"Sometimes," Diana rearranged them to have Sophie's head on her shoulder instead since that was easier for this, to fold her into her arms, stroking her hair now, running a finger over the shell of her ear, "it's like when they were babies all over and they're crying and crying and  _crying_ and you can't tell them what's wrong and they can't tell you. Sort of. You can only do your best. Tell her it makes you sad. Or confused. That it hurts you too. That it's natural and normal to feel how she feels."  
  
Sophie's mouth twisted, that knife's edge between a smile and a grimace. "How're you so good at this?"  
  
"Honest answer? I've been divorced and if you don't want to fuck them up everyone has to be open to a lot of frank conversations."  
  
"Shit I'm sorry—"  
  
"Ah don't be," Diana waved the words away as best she could given she was in a position where her arm would be asleep before long, "it was years back now; we can all laugh about things."  
  
"She didn't want to talk about it much, I didn't want to push her because I haven't when I've been shot it's just oh this is a shite thing that's happened but I wasn't that young. That's the bastard part of it."  
  
"Reckon that's why he's picked them, we're not ourselves, we're second-guessing what we say and do – how many people are upset because it's two kids that got caught in the crossfire?"  
  
"The pack's still up in arms, believe me." Sophie's voice had gone all tight again, exhaustion flattening it out despite the hour; how many phone calls or emails or group texts was she subject to? Diana could only sympathise. Her world was smaller. So much smaller. There was less to worry about carried with her every waking hour. "What about your end?"  
  
Diana rubbed at her face, the groan lodged in the back of her throat where it couldn't be forced into a laugh despite her efforts, only a stubborn prickling burn. "Not everyone would have much sympathy since folk like Shug exist but mum and dad are—they're devastated. It's why they aren't here. Jillian doesn't want them around, she made that decision herself and I agree with her now that you've explained more about what it's like. Maybe it's selfish, not wanting more stress around."  
  
"What's more stress going to accomplish?"  
  
"Nothing good, nothing good," Diana agreed though not easily but how much came easily to them these days but more worries to try to set neatly into piles for the next day and the next. "We should try to get some sleep, early start the morrow."  
  
"One more thing – you good with Vi knowing?"  
  
"We're both grown enough, they're not wee girls and we've been under the same roof so…" She trailed off, finally finding her real smile as she tipped Sophie's chin up. "I've got it on good authority I'm no good at this and would've needed the push anyway."  
  
"Davey'll be laughing when he finds out about them putting it together."  
  
"Some light at the end of the tunnel, now," Diana felt it was her turn to have Sophie under her hands, to worry about tomorrow when tomorrow came as she undid the drawstring of her pyjamas to ease them down her thighs, "your turn to not wake the household."  
  


* * *

  
  
Five of them could've fitted into one car almost comfortably but given what they were doing and having to meet up with Davey it had been decided that Sophie and Diana would go in Diana's car back to the islands since they knew what they were looking for while Nora took the girls to meet Davey and they could split up again, Nora and Jillian, Violet and Davey, three teams to cover a bit more ground. If needed, another boat could always be snagged Diana had assured them after a breakfast no one had wanted but had forced down all the same. It promised to be a long day ahead of them after all out on the lochside and though the weather had deigned to remember it was summer after all that wouldn't necessarily mean much to them once they were out and about.   
  
"Remember there's ticks," Diana told everyone over breakfast which had ended up being porridge.  
  
Sophie would've liked to say it was about how it filled you about, all that slow release carb stuff she'd learnt years ago in school and skimmed in magazines when she was bored on trains or in waiting rooms but if she honestly had to guess, porridge was utterly bland and inoffensive. From the looks she'd seen when the room had filled up this morning she wasn't the only one with nausea and an upset tummy.  
  
Violet pulled a face, eyes wide. "Ticks." She repeated the word tonelessly.  
  
"There's deer everywhere," Diana explained after spooning the last of her breakfast into her mouth, throwing her tea back; she was driving out in her car, Sophie with her so she'd be checking that first. "Plenty of ticks. Socks over your jeans, not fashionable but no one wants Lyme disease."  
  
"Oh my god  _mum_ ," Jillian groaned around a mouthful, the spoon handle working from side to side. Nora patted hers shoulder.  
  
"We've got midge repellent in all the bags; they should be in the boot. We'll leave as soon as everyone's finished and dressed so another, what, fifteen, twenty minutes?" Diana asked, up on her feet and dumping her bowl in the sink.  
  
"Sounds good to me, I tossed in all the bags last night before dinner so get your skates on if you want to check anything," Nora added, following her sister. "Better go pee before we stop or it'll be out in the woods—"  
  
"Nora!" Jillian pushed away from the table, apparently finished too. "Why is everyone in this family mental. Sophie I'm sorry you've got tangled up in a madhouse, I apologise, I do."  
  
With that, she left, Violet not far behind her with a smirk on her face. "Thirteen going on thirty," Sophie remarked without heat, stirring the last mouthful or two in her bowl idly now that it had gone cold, a congealed mess where the honey had sunk. "We all set on them being out and about with us?"  
  
"We can't keep going over it," Diana held out a hand for Sophie's bowl, their fingers brushing. "We need the bodies and…they know the risks. They're not stupid, they're not little girls, they want to be part of it and it happened to them, we can't deny them some part of it, we can only minimise the risk."  
  
Which was easier for Diana to say. Or not. Jillian was just as susceptible to silver now as Sophie, as Violet, as Davey. To wolfsbane which Hugh would surely have to have as well from what they could gather from all the contacts they'd checked out and from the sort of person he seemed to be. This was risk. Calculated and judged acceptable. Sophie only wished her stomach would settle. "They'll have Nora and Davey with them, I've got the pack on standby, you've got your parents, Erin, the others you both think are trustworthy—" Sophie blew out a sigh and allowed Diana to pull her up and to her feet, grateful to be held and held up, hands rubbing her back. "This is shit," she finished after a long moment.  
  
"Oh yeah, any other time I'd say no, absolutely not but it's like you said: leave them here and something happens since we can't know we're not being watched? It'd destroy us. Get other people more involved than they already are? Might spook him, brings about a whole host of other risks with it."  
  
"Why don't I feel better for you parroting that back to me? Isn't that what someone repeating your great ideas back is meant to do for you? Wee ego boost?"  
  
"Not when it's a lead weight in the belly."  
  
"Five minute warning!" Nora's bellow from the top of the stairs saw them both jumping, a narrowly avoided collision of chins that at least prompted a laugh too. "If you're winching in there so help me!"  
  
"Who even says winching?" Sophie leant back to shout back, out of courtesy. Diana needed to be able to hear today, and it was rude to go deafening someone. "Does she say winching?"  
  
"Sometimes you get caught enough doing something on the back doorstep eating some boy like you've no had your tea and it becomes who you are." Diana shrugged, kissed Sophie and headed for the door. "Maybe we don't warn Davey about that, might scare him off."  
  
"When this is all said and done and we're planning their wedding? I've got some stories to tell."  
  
"Promises promises."  
  
"C'mon, before your sister makes up lurid stories about us, she's got a drive with our daughters ahead of her and ammunition from last night she'll have been brewing no doubt." Sophie was smiling, incredibly, even when she knew what lay ahead of them today so that was something as Diana headed out the kitchen door (behind schedule because of her she had to note with some smugness) for the car.  
  
Nora was by the stairs still, lacing up a pair of well-worn walking boots, thick grey socks appearing over the top of them to protect any bare skin from the threat of ticks. She looked up when Sophie passed her to make kissy noises, face puckered like a cat's arse and Sophie flipped her off since the girls weren't around, even if they had been she probably would've done it anyway because Nora deserved it. She was on her way to the door when Nora cursed and she turned to see her overbalancing and almost falling off the stair as she tried to grab for Sophie's wrist.  
  
"Can I help you?" Sophie asked, turning on her heel, arms folded.  
  
"You're good for her, I mean we've known each other how long now?" Sophie made a vague noise, unsure if Nora wanted an answer to that one or not. "But if you hurt her I'll have to do something. Not kill you because Violet's great and I don't want some werewolf blood feud coming for me-"  
  
"I wouldn't hurt her," Sophie countered.  
  
"I'm her sister, even I don't get to hurt her very long without something happening."  
  
"And if she hurts me?"  
  
"I'll kick her arse for being an idiot."  
  
"Good to know. And thanks," Sophie paused, taking the time to think through her words even as it crept away from her but Nora was smiling, not pushing, "it's...new? Not what I expected right now?"  
  
"Just what the two of you idiots needed according to everyone who knows better?" The lightness wasn't teasing, not the way it lilted up into a question as Nora stopped what she was doing as if she was checking that she hadn't prodded anything painful.  
  
Sophie choked and Nora laughed, a bubble of delight if she was judging that one. "You try being a single mum and see how it goes when it's our sort of life," she said when she couldn't think of anything else to say and there was something in Nora's smile that softened then.  
  
Something that said yes, she knew, and she tied her laces, rising to her feet with open arms that Sophie accepted, the heavy clap between her shoulders almost knocking the breath from her as doors shut upstairs, feet heading for the stairs. "You're family," Nora was saying into her ear. "No matter what, you're family."  
  
"God what have I done to myself?" Sophie managed, blinking back sudden tears as Nora laughed. "C'mon, we need to go get this bastard and find our Kevin."  
  
"Let's go, girls?"  
  
"Ready!"  
  
Both of them had to clear the way as Jillian and Violet swung and leapt the last few stairs down, landing with a floor-shaking thump that rattled a few photos framed on the walls of generations of hunters past (Sophie assumed, she'd not bothered to ask yet and might later, when they were back, when everything was taken care of).   
  
Outside a car horn beeped, Diana signalling them and Sophie turned off the lights and locked up once they were all ushered out, texting Davey on the way to the car: this was finally it and she was ready for it.


	9. Chapter 9

Awareness came slowly, an unwelcome but urgent struggle as Diana blinked against eyelids that refused to cooperate. Beneath her the ground seemed to lurch and sway but that couldn't be right, could it? Had she fallen? It was damp but—she turned her cheek, squinting, and it wasn't wet leaves and thick mud beneath her cheek, or even stone and gravel but wooden boards and that didn't make sense. Her head throbbed. Maybe she'd hurt it worse and she wasn't putting the pieces together right so that was why, something Erin would've been able to explain. Her mouth didn't want to work when she tried opening it, the bubbling panic that rose same as sleep paralysis, arms and legs refusing to budge—  
  
How badly had she hurt herself?  
  
A whimper escaped. Sophie would find her. Sophie was about somewhere wasn't she? Yes. That was right, Sophie was with her because they'd gone out to Inchcailloch together again, they'd left the car—they'd left the car and—  
  
The ground rolled, jostled her. Nothing else hurt, only her head and she closed eyes she'd barely managed to inch open against a light that burned. Was it good that it didn't hurt? Paramedics asked if you could move your toes, your fingers, could you feel this or that. Where was Sophie? Sophie had been with her. Sophie had definitely been with her, they'd been walking, the weather had cleared up better than before, they'd tied the boat up, they'd climbed up to the summit to get a decent lay of the place and spot for boats easier so where would she have fallen from?  
  
Something nagged at her but her head pulsed, an ice-pick behind the eye and she groaned, let her head loll whichever way it wanted to and shut her eyes. Sophie would find her. Sophie had gone to get help. Phones didn't work on the island.  
  
The ground rocked and swayed. She screwed her eyes tight shut as her stomach heaved and waited for it to be over.  
  


* * *

  
  
"Stop pacing."  
  
Nora ignored her niece, continuing her stalking back and forth around the car, one of the last few left in the same car park they'd all met up and departed from earlier in the day; her sister and Sophie walking down to the boatyard then onwards to the island, her and Jillian splitting off one way, Davey showing up to grab Violet. They were meant to meet up by five though everyone landside had ended up meeting up for lunch and to see if they'd had any notes, stalking around the boatyards where no one had seen Diana or Sophie since they'd headed off. Which wasn't surprising, she had to admit, it was still summer tourist season, and they'd borrowed a friend's boat again so no one would notice it missing unless it didn't come back.  
  
But it was after five.  
  
It was half five, getting on for quarter to six and there wasn't any sign of them.  
  
With a glance up she could see Davey on the phone to someone, gnawing on his lip as Jillian and Violet bent their heads together, leaning back against his car with a sigh. Would Diana be better at this? Probably. Diana behaved herself, most of the time at least, when something was going on even if Nora liked to tease her or try to piss her off as she tried her sister again. Voicemail.   
  
"Hi, it's me. Again." She lost the battle when it came to bringing her thumb up to her mouth, the skin at the side raw now, soon to be bloodied. "Give me a ring back when you get this. Bye."  
  
If she stabbed the screen harder than necessary to end the call then she had her back to everyone else so they weren't able to see her doing it at least, small comfort that it was.  
  
"Any luck?" Violet had her attention on Davey who was sagged back against the bonnet of his car, arms folded across his chest, head dropped towards his chest; it made him look young, not all that much older than them and despite the time they'd ended up spending together recently, Nora hadn't actually found that out.   
  
Maybe she should've but more pressing concerns took up her time.  
  
"No," Davey blew out a slow breath, trying for a smile that veered into the territory of pained grimace all too quickly. "No one's seen them – I was thinking maybe we could go back down to the boatyards if you want to keep trying? No sense in everyone hanging about here is there?"  
  
"Maybe Nora needs the walk more," Jillian muttered but she was shoving herself away from the car and Nora couldn't have kept the hurt off her face even if she'd tried; she'd timed turning back round to everyone else badly, Diana's stubbornness in miniature staring back at her with a sullen set to her jaw, hands thrust in her pockets. "I want to go, you said what Shug's boat looks like, I've got a picture on my phone."  
  
"I'm going too, unless someone should stay with Nora…" Violet trailed off, clearly torn between the facts that they'd drilled into everyone that no one was to be alone on the trip with her own desire to be with anyone who wasn't Nora, Nora pacing back and forth, who'd been snapping ever since she'd seen the car with no one in it.  
  
"No you go, I'll be fine I can look after myself. I'll come catch you both up in five minutes okay? Go on, I just…I just need five minutes," Nora urged with a tight nod.  
  
Davey nodded back, leading them off only to stop when Jillian came running back a few steps away, clattering into Nora the way she did when she'd been little and she'd picked her up from school if Diana or Iona had been busy, the way kids ran like there was no tomorrow, clattering full-tilt into her as Nora wrapped her up in her arms without a moment's hesitation, stroking her wind-tangled hair. There were pine needles caught in it still, bits of twig and lichen, the summer perfume of midge repellent and sunscreen in her nose. When had she gotten so tall that she was near eye level with Nora already? Who'd allowed for that? She clutched her tight, not wanting to let go until she gave her a little push.  
  
"Off you go, I'll catch up."  
  
"Promise?" Jillian hadn't aged when she asked that, still five or thereabouts when she wanted to make sure that yes she was getting her bedtime story.  
  
"Promise Jilly-bean. Go, away with you." Another little shove and Jillian turned, reluctantly, and caught up with Davey and Violet, Davey raising a hand in a wave that Nora returned.   
  
Left alone by the car with the spare cars, she had no real plan for what to do other than  _knowing_  something had gone wrong. Diana and Sophie had said they'd be back first since they'd be without any sort of reception on the island and with the summer affording them extra hours of daylight, they'd be able to stay out later if they all got tea together. But they hadn't been here. Which, fair enough, they could be running late but Diana wasn't like that, Diana was only late if someone else (Nora and Jillian being the worst culprits, she'd been  _that_  sort of couple when she'd been with Iona, one of their less appealing married traits back in the day) and Nora had been pacing worse than a caged tiger since, fruitlessly trying both their mobiles in combination with the girls and Davey. Catastrophising. Not something she normally indulged in, she'd gotten that under control years ago but given what they were doing today then maybe it was—well not  _fine_  to indulge it but understandable. She paced a wider circle around the car, working out some of the energy. It wouldn’t help anyone if she was snapping and sniping at them, not when they were worked up, not when they were tired.  
  
Not when Sophie's phone went to voicemail again when she tried it. "Sophie," she paused after the cheery message, "Sophie look it's…it's Nora I don't know what's happened just—just ring me. Please. Let me know what's happened. Anything. Because I'm at a loose end and I'm not doing this."  
  
Not when Diana's phone went to voicemail again too when she tried it. "Di. Di I have no idea what I'm doing and you don't get to gloat about it when you're not picking up when it's a time like this. Am I meant to know if you're okay? Is it a sister thing? It doesn't feel right. Just…I love you? Ring me. Give me some sign all that daft shit we take the piss out of. Bye."  
  
She took a deep breath, leaning over the bonnet of the car as she ignored tourists filing onto their bus. A brigade of pensioners enjoying their day out, ready for it to end as they rumbled off to the next stop or whatever nice wee hotel they'd be sleeping in for the night, oblivious to some woman in old jeans, a shirt, and thick socks over the bottoms of the jeans in her clarty walking boots having a breakdown in a car park out in Balmaha of all places.  
  
God she'd need to ring their parents sooner rather than later. And Iona. Or did she phone when she knew something? Something more than they'd missed their check-in?  
  
Turning on her heel, she shoved her phone in her pocket before she could make any rash decisions, following after Davey and the girls down to the boatyards, past the place where they said they'd be eating that night with tables out in the open, the smell of beer enticing; beer wouldn't help her problems, and if she had to drive (she almost certainly had to drive, she didn't fancy leaving a car out here overnight, she hadn't checked to see what would happen if it was left, if it got towed) then she wasn't going to do it with a drink in her. Not if she had anyone else in the car and not on these roads, tempting as it was. Those days were behind her now. Swinging her arms, Nora tried the breathing techniques that were meant to help with calming you down, all that in-hold-out for whatever count it was and now she got it, how Diana had exploded at her about it being 'a load of patronising shite, fuck off with it' because the roaring in her ears got louder and louder as her legs carried her along to the boats, to where she spotted her three companions already at the little shed, chatting away.  
  
Well, the girls were.  _Looks about right_ , she thought to herself as she spotted Davey peering out at the boats with a scowl and a squint.   
  
"Hey," she greeted from just far enough away that he wouldn't startle. Everyone was jumpy. Or she'd assume that until proven otherwise. "Putting them to work?"  
  
"I don't know how to do pictures on phones without 'embarrassing myself'," Davey crooked his fingers, a grin twisting his mouth as he looked out over the water. "Any luck?"  
  
"Nope," Nora replied flatly. "Left embarrassing voicemails I'll need to delete later on."  
  
"Out of all of us, I hate to say it but they're absolutely the most capable."  
  
"Unless someone fell and broke their back."  
  
"You know it's busy enough we'd have heard."  
  
"Or someone got shot. Or—"  
  
"Ssh. Ssh. Just…let's not. I can't do that it doesn’t go anywhere good, it doesn't help anyone just keep an eye on those two or help me figure out if you can spy his boat because there are too many boats and they all look the same – what was it called again?"  
  
"The Murron."  
  
Davey glanced over to the hut again and Nora did too but the girls seemed fine, chatting away and no one else was about that she could tell, and she looked back at him. "He named it after his wife?"  
  
"Hugh or Shug or however we're calling him, he never let go really. So yeah. Named it after her. Green on the bottom half, white with brown trim, pretty well-maintained."  
  
"That could be half the boats I've seen about here." Davey sounded miserable as he said it and Nora couldn't blame him; this time of year and the Loch was teeming with traffic both on and off the road though plenty of the boats were sleek white craft with silver lettering, flashier numbers that went at high speeds, not the old fashioned number Shug claimed as his.   
  
"Nora! Davey!" Violet's voice jarred them both out of their reverie and squinting out over the water as she came racing over, Nora wincing as she watching the girl planting a hand on her side. Today had been a long day for her and she still had a bullet wound healing away under all those clothes, she had to be tiring by now if the way she bent at the knees to gulp in air after so short a run to them at the jetty was an indication. "Hi we—oof—"  
  
"Take your time, c'mon, it's all right." Davey was moving to take hold of her elbow, hovering a hand over her back just in case, something about how earlier in the day (Nora didn't know, Diana and Sophie weren't to know apparently because Violet had her pride and didn't want to be babied) she'd been seeing black spots and had a stitch forcing them to stop for a bit. Though that could happen to anyone.   
  
Jillian skidded to a halt just behind Violet, Nora's arm jerking out to grab her so close to the water without even thinking.  
  
"We found something!" Jillian didn't quite shout but it was a near thing, the excitement palpable in her voice as she bounced up and down.  
  
"The guy over there," Violet straightened, jerking her head back where they'd both come from, "said he saw Shug's boat headed out earlier today  _after_  all of us came out here. He knows Shug but not well, doesn't really talk much at all, says he makes everyone uncomfortable because he's…he's weird and he wouldn't say  _how_  to us."  
  
"I think I get how," Nora replied then found herself on the receiving end of rolled eyes from her niece and friend.  
  
"We're not stupid, d'you think we don't meet people who sound like Shug?" Jillian asked, continuing before Nora could reply, Davey snorting unhelpfully next to her.   
  
"Fair do's." Davey shrugged when Nora turned slowly in his direction, a retort trapped behind her teeth. "What? They do. You did too, everyone's got some Shug's about."  
  
"Right. Fine. Go on," Nora gritted her teeth. She didn't have to like it, what she had to do was hear the pair of them out as Violet held out a hand for Jillian's phone.  
  
"He said he saw Shug heading out on the boat earlier today, a bit after we got here – he's around often enough but today's the first time he's seen him about in a while, said he seemed…funny? Didn't know exactly what he meant by funny, just a bit off."  
  
"We said he was our uncle," Jillian added, "like, grandpa's pal sort of uncle and we were worried about him, he believed us and just kept rambling on."  
  
Nora nodded, giving them a smile of approval: to her they didn't look enough alike but to a stranger they probably could pass for cousins, a decent lie on the fly especially under the circumstances when Nora herself was barely able to hold it together enough to know what she was supposed to do next.  
  
"Did he say anything about anyone matching Kevin's description?" Davey asked, somewhere between hope and dread, turned back towards the water.  
  
"He thinks he might've but that could be a lot of people. Sorry Davey." Violet wrapped an arm around him that turned into a hug, an easy way of steering Davey back towards the three of them and away from the water's edge where he was staring off into nothingness, the ten mile stare Nora knew all too well.  
  
"Mum and Sophie's boat never came back but it's not out there – he checked their plans and no one logged it in. If we want to go out and have a look we can head out there and see for ourselves if you know how to use a boat, I said I thought you did."  
  
"Yeah, yeah I know Jillian. What else did he say?"  
  
"That last time they were out here The Murron was out."  
  
It was all Nora needed to hear, striding away as their voices fell on deaf ears: she had a boat to borrow, to see for herself what was going on out on Inchcailloch before it had a chance to start getting dark when her sister and Sophie were out there.  
  


* * *

  
  
Sophie rubbed her head or attempted to, her left arm refusing to move which was unfortunate since her head had that bleary aching quality that came with a hangover only she sure as hell hadn't been drinking. She could at least sit up and managed that which was good though she nearly toppled over again since neither arm seemed to be willing or able to cooperate in any effort to help keep her upright at the moment. The pain sat low, right at the base of her skull, and if she could touch it she was sure it would have the tenderness of a bruise and that wasn't—  
  
She scrunched her eyes shut and forced them open.  
  
Her legs were bound tight at the ankles with something heavy duty that wasn't restricting the blood flow but was stopping her from moving more than an inch, same with her wrists now that her awareness was starting to come back to her; her arms were behind, shoulders pulled back tight enough to strain across the front of her collarbone, wrists chafing when she tried wriggling them as she looked around, black spots swimming in her peripheral vision. Small room. Dark wood. A little light peeking that stung her eyes to the point of tears. Diana slumped next to her—  
  
"Diana!" Her voice cracked when she tried to speak, trying to shuffle closer as she forced herself to stay awake and get a proper look at the other woman who had her head slumped forward, chin on her chest. Diana groaned which was a start and Sophie shuffled over as much as she could, trying to kick with both legs to wake her up, hoping she wasn't injured in any way. "Diana, hey, wakey wakey."  
  
"Christ," Diana moaned, head lolling back sharply then slumping back down. Sophie winced. "Soph?"  
  
"Hey, hi, it's me, are you all right?"  
  
"My head's bursting," Diana blew out a huge sigh, one that shuddered all the way through her and Sophie finally managed to get a decent look at her to see that they were both trussed up but neither seemed worse for wear, a red mark on Diana's cheek that she couldn't place, half-hidden behind a curtain of hair she didn't seem inclined to shake out of her face. Not that Sophie blamed her, she didn't know why their heads hurt but she could guess at it. "You all right?"  
  
"Same with the head but nothing else. Stiff. Don't know how long it's been but I think it's still day."  
  
"We're not on Inchcailloch," Diana shifted, shifting to look around the room again. "I thought I'd fallen for a bit, I think my memory's still—y'know? But I thought I'd fallen and I was on the ground but it must've been a bought. There's nowhere like this on Inchcailloch."  
  
"Fuck." Sophie swallowed the bubble of despair that rose up in her alongside the panic. "Any ideas?"  
  
Before Diana could answer there was a door that opened and shut, heavy footsteps lumbering about overhead that had them shutting their mouths, Diana dropping her head back down; Sophie guessed it was to allow her to peer up through the cover of her hair as Sophie shifted back to where she'd been left, trying her best to keep the sensation in her fingers, to see if she could find the knot.   
  
It wasn't to be: a trapdoor overhead swung open, bathing them both in light as someone thudded down the stairs, huffing and puffing the whole way as the door stayed open above them though Sophie had little doubt as to the identity. Hugh, Shug, whatever he wanted to be called didn't matter when he'd shot her Violet, bitten Jillian, roped Kevin into it, and now managed to get her and Diana here where no one was liable to find them. She'd seen him once, if only for those brief moments and seeing him again through slitted eyes with vision that swam was much the same: as unremarkable a man who didn't live up to the monster stories anyone painted. Old and worn, hair grey and thinning, skin that was wrinkled and sagging on itself even if he was still a broad man, still a man who strength enough to have brought her and Diana here, off Inchcailloch, on and off a boat. He stopped at the foot of the stairs, breathing heavily as the weight of his gaze landed upon them, every instinct in her body fighting to move, coiled and ready to tear, to bite, the parts of herself that she'd carefully tamed (she hated to put it that way but other word was there?) to not be hunted by people like him.  
  
"You awake?" His voice was rough, a deep brogue that suggested he'd barely spoken at all. Which wasn't out of the question given what she knew about him from Diana and Nora but she wished they'd had a moment longer before he'd interrupted them to talk about what they wanted to do. If they were best pretending to be out cold still. Not that there was much they could do given their position but she'd at least  _know_.  
  
Diana didn't move. Sophie remained still.  
  
"God's sake, I  _told him_ ," he stomped closer, Sophie hoping her breathing was steady enough, that her eyes looked natural enough like this, "I bloody well  _told him_  to be careful but that's what you get. It's what you get isn't it? Isn't it?" Something was set down in front of them with a thump and a slosh but no strong odour – water maybe if she had to guess – and a hand roughly shook her knees as if he didn't want to touch her but knew he should. "Lass? Lass can you hear me? Are you—"  
  
"Get off her." Diana growled the words, or close enough, trying her best to glare and grit her teeth if her head ached as surely as Sophie's own.  
  
"Diana." Hugh said her name flatly, letting go of Sophie to turn his attention away, making a move as if to steady Diana then thinking better of it when she shifted away from him, shaking her hair out her face.  
  
"What the hell is wrong with you? What did you do?"  
  
"Diana, listen to me, you're not well, I didn't mean—your head—"  
  
"Shut up that was you."  
  
"No. No that wasn't me, it's what you get for working with  _them_." Despite the situation, the venom in his voice when referring to werewolves, to Sophie and anyone like her still managed to take her aback despite living as one her whole life, not helped by the way he turned back her way to glare at her with wet eyes hardened with hate. "I need to check and make sure nothing's damaged."  
  
"Oh now you care?" Sophie spoke up too since Diana was talking as well, no reason to stay silent and it might help, keeping him off-balance.   
  
"I didn't—" Hugh tried only for Diana to snort, scooting herself upright another inch with his gaze intent and on Sophie as it was.  
  
"You didn't what? You had a plan. You were the one who shot her daughter, Hugh. You had someone bite my wee girl – doesn't make any sense there if you hate werewolves that much does it? You know my parents, how often do they talk about Jillian? What was the plan?" Diana was getting worked up, the anger cutting through the grogginess from her head injury that Sophie suspected, much as her own, had come from being hit with something from what Hugh had said, from the pain lingering. At least no one had been shot. No one had been drugged. They had that advantage.  
  
So far.   
  
Hugh stepped back away from them both, raking his hands through his hair, breathing slow and deep. Sophie tried to catch Diana's eye but missed it; Hugh demanded their attention, caught as they were after being whacked round the back of the head, trussed up, and definitely no longer on the island they'd departed from. Someone would know. They'd know the boat hadn't come back. They'd look. Had he taken their phones? Were the rest of their things here or not? Her thoughts were racing and she cursed him for coming in when he had, interrupting her and Diana before they'd had a real moment to talk to one another.  
  
"Where's Kevin?" Sophie asked while he was trying to get himself together, a bitterness in her voice she hadn't anticipated but didn't bother to smother or force down either way. Kevin had made mistakes, she wasn't about to pretend that he hadn't but when it came to who had the bloodier hands here, there was the man who fired the gun. The man who was calling the shots. And that was the man down here trying to collect himself.  
  
The worst sort of hunter. You could deal with the rabid ones. They were the same as anyone who frothed and foamed at the mouth: they couldn't help but give themselves away, spouting their hate to anyone who'd listen and even those who wouldn't, but the quiet ones who managed to appear to the world like normal folk or even folk a bit off but still normal enough? They were the ones you watched for. You didn't know then. The ones not to be trusted.   
  
"He's about," Hugh managed after another minute, wiping his hands on the front of his jacket. "He's still about, don't worry about—about…him."  
  
"Working with him, with one of us," Sophie showed all her teeth in what might have been a smile under any other circumstance, "and you can't even say his name."  
  
"Nora'd have some names for you." Diana was recovering herself the longer she talked it seemed, a caustic edge in her voice and Sophie almost laughed. Aye, Nora would have a few things to say if she was about.   
  
"That sister of yours was always uncouth," Hugh muttered, kneeling again with the popping of both knees – good to know, a reminder that he was older for the solid look of him – as he uncapped the heavy duty plastic that didn't come with the smell Sophie had feared. Not lighter fluid or petrol or anything. Probably water.  
  
Not that she was about to trust it. She wasn't daft.  
  
"You don't know anything about anyone, only what you want to see, that's the problem with—" Diana started to choke and cough, swallowing convulsively around a dry throat as she tried to continue only to break off, almost knocking herself to the side.  
  
"Here, take a drink," Hugh offered, the great huge bottle held out to Diana who glared at it even as she kept spluttering.  
  
"We don't know what you've put in that." Sophie spoke for her, confident enough that Diana's mind would be on the same track as hers though she had her own concerns that sharpened her mind now: wolf's bane would make a normal person sick fairly quickly if they were given it, but if she ended up drinking it then she knew just how rapid the onset was, and how painful and unpleasant the symptoms.  
  
Hugh had the gall to give her a hurt look, water sloshing over his hand as he pulled it back. "I'm not about to poison women," he said, the affront turning him red all the way to his ears, even up where his hair had gone thin on top. No one had been wrong about him at all, not in the slightest. "Fine, fine, I can accept that." And he took a hefty chug himself, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand then around the lip of the bottle before he held it out to Diana who had little choice but to drink.  
  
Sophie did the same when offered. Dehydration would screw her over just as easily and if he'd taken a drink…well it wasn't that she  _wanted_  to trust him but anything he'd be drugging them with would have a taste or he'd be up shit creek with them. So she swallowed, tightened her jaw after and took another breath through her nose as she tried to make more sense of where they were.  
  
"None of this is—If people had  _listened_  to me in the first place," Hugh said as he capped the bottle again and set it down where neither of them could easily knock it over if they kicked it though what good it'd do them Sophie didn't know, at least not right now. "Things wouldn't have to be like this, they wouldn't. But I lost—you don't know what loss is."  
  
"I almost lost Jillian!" Diana snapped, lunging forward only to catch herself when she seemed to remember her predicament.  
  
"I almost lost Violet. They've got names, our daughters. Jillian and Violet. You shot her. You shot her with silver. How many times have you done that, Hugh or Shug or whatever you want to call yourself? How many people have you killed or almost killed? Because it's not fun. It's awful. I've been poisoned before with wolf's bane and almost died if it wasn't for Nora – oh I bet you know that, you're the kind of creepy old man who knows everyone's business because you can't help yourself, you've no other life because you can't move on can you? – and I've been shot with silver and being shot is…" Sophie took a deep shuddering breath, running her tongue over her teeth as Hugh stared at her, blinking, his mouth working soundlessly as if he'd not anticipated this, the man who'd planned and planned but still had gaps in it, somehow, and was finding himself having to work it out on the fly.   
  
"Have you had an allergic reaction, Hugh?" Sophie continued, that awful fixed grimace aching the longer it remained on her face, her voice so low she barely recognised it now. "This is the one where someone would stab you with an EpiPen but funny thing, despite how long we've been around, there aren't any for us. There's not an EpiPen if you get shot with a silver bullet. It's close to anaphylactic shock, we think, because that's our best guess because even now despite having survived everything where people think it's not real, we're just a myth, there are people like  _you_  who make it dangerous enough that there are things we can't do. That we can't check. So the things in our system that have been there since man and wolf started hanging around together? They go wild. It's a miserable way to die if you don't get a bullet out in time. Poison is poison, that makes us sicker than most people because it targets something again, it's especially toxic for us but it'd kill her," she jerked her head to Diana who was looking between them both, barely daring to breathe, "if no one gave her anything for it. You did that to my daughter. She's barely a teenager. She has to go back to school with a gunshot wound.  _You_  did that."  
  
Hugh rose to his feet, staggering back as if she'd struck him and maybe she had because she wanted to, god did she want to, she wanted to rip and tear, every terrible urge present in her that surged with stress or adrenaline or the full moon turning but her head was fuzzy enough still that it wasn't enough to help her break free. Not quite. If she had the time, if he didn't do anything else—  
  
But he was pacing now, old floorboards creaking in protest as he stomped back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, building up a good head of steam.  
  
"My Murron," Hugh's voice had dropped to an eerie calm after a shuddering sob as if he wasn't there, looking away and out through the low window that he moved to stand before, turned so he was leaning against it, one eye on them, "she was bitten by one of your lot. She never deserved it. She was a good woman. A good, honest, kind woman who never did anyone any harm. Kept a tidy home, went to Church, taught Sunday school for the little ones – we had plans for our own bairns one day, talked about it. Then…then this thing comes when she was…" he broke off, ashen, Diana looking over to Sophie then both of them watching him carefully for what he'd do next, "I don't remember. I don't remember anymore, God why don't I remember that part? Was she putting out the washing? Was she…"  
  
Something almost like a sob hitched in his throat. They all waited, the moment stretching out as Sophie tested the give in her bindings. No luck. Not yet.  
  
"This thing came and she was—she wasn't part of any of it. She didn't deserve it."  
  
Diana was silent, chewing her lip as she looked over to Sophie, a question in her eyes. Sophie nodded to her and she cleared her throat, startling Hugh back into the world. "If Murron didn't deserve it, if all this is because of what happened to her because I know you hate werewolves, believe me I do, then why did Jillian deserve it? Do you think that's what Murron would've wanted?"  
  
Hugh stared, nostrils flaring. He opened his mouth then pressed it shut, lips pale and white, his whole chin buckling with the strain of holding himself together as he turned sharply on his heel and marched back up the stairs, slamming the trapdoor above them closed again.  
  
"Bugger," Diana muttered after he'd gone. "Thought that might've gone better. Right, time to see if there's a loose nail then."  
  
"I'll see if I can stand up and figure out where we are."  
  


* * *

  
  
They all piled into the boat, Nora the one in charge of it since she was the only one with any sort of experience even if she was regrettably rustier than she wanted to admit to now that there were as many important passengers aboard with Diana and Sophie missing, presumed captive.  
  
Jillian and Violet trying to look serious trussed up in their lifejackets helped somewhat, hair buffeted by the speed they clipped over the waters at, Nora's eyes streaming as she squinted, Davey with the binoculars glued to his eyes for a sign of the right boat, for anywhere they might have been taken.  
  
Diana and Sophie were out there and they were coming for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I highly doubt the bungalow on Inchconnachan has a cellar but since this is a Scotland with werewolves (that are more science-based than supernatural, I'll stick the full notes in at the very end) I'm taking some liberties with that.


	10. Chapter 10

"You ever wish," Diana said as she and Sophie sat there with Hugh gone, the footsteps overhead having disappeared after what might've been a front door slamming for good measure, "that you paid more attention to some of those survival programmes on telly?"  
  
"What, Bear Grylls and that?"  
  
"Not just him; he's like your wee cousin that was a bit too into horses and never recovered but some of them that were all about daylight and angles, all that nonsense because I'm fucked if I know what time it is now. Used to be good at it but not so much these days." Diana laughed, despite the enormity of their situation hitting her like a ton of bricks. "Given my job and – what's it for schoo? Extracurriculars? – I'd have to keep up with it and know it."  
  
Sophie laughed too, setting her a little more at ease, the bindings creaking just a little as she settled herself about as comfortably as either of them could. "Violet told me about how time goes faster when you're older, relativity y'know? She's into physics. You know, endless summers when you’re six, blink of an eye when you’re thirty?"  
  
"Jesus." Diana shuddered at Sophie's words, squinting outside. It was summer, sometimes it was bright before five in the morning because it woke her up until she turned away, eyes screwed up, at least where they were all holed up for the moment. She had blackout blinds in her own house to see her through. It might not start to get dark until well after nine so depending on how long they'd been knocked out for after being taken, that still left them with hours. She started working on her wrists again. "How're you doing?"  
  
"Thirsty but I wasn't trusting that for either of us unless he took a drink and since I don't know the situation for going for a pee?" Sophie exhaled gustily, a grim half-smile on her face that Diana knew matched her own. "I can still feel my fingers and toes, I don't think I've got a concussion but we should be staying awake anyway."  
  
"Headache, nausea, confusion, dizziness," Diana had to know all that for work and it made her feel better to reel them off as she pressed her nails into the tips of her fingers to make sure the sensation was fine if a little dulled as if she'd been sat on them too long, her shoulders and sternum protesting the position. "Vomiting, ringing in your ears, any amnesia about what happened – if we both keep ourselves aware of those things we'll be okay I think but staying awake sounds good. I'm keyed up anyway."  
  
Sophie nodded, looking over at Diana where she was wriggling about and she probably looked a bit of a sight, scooting herself forward as she tried to get a better angle. "Getting anywhere?"  
  
"No clue, he's done a good job but he's got a boat, can't tell the sort of knots he's used – you know any?" Diana tried to keep the note of hope out of her voice, starting to turn but Sophie shook her head.  
  
"I'm not that sort of outdoorsy woman, I'm sorry."  
  
"No you're fine, just—if I keep an eye can you see if I'm doing anything?"  
  
Sophie nodded and Diana turned herself about, trying to keep her fingers out of the way as best she could since there wasn't much else she could do. Having her legs bound wasn't helping but she at least wriggled her toes in her shoes too and since she could do that she contented herself with them being in much the same state as her fingers. With her eyes fixed and ears straining for anything more than the noises of an old, old house settling about them, she waited, moving her fingers at Sophie's direction, the skin increasingly raw as her sleeves ended up pushed up from the work but it gave her more room to manoeuvre, finding herself huffing and puffing until  _something_  slid through.  
  
"One of them went." Sophie whispered it, apparently as unable to believe it – or to hope – as Diana was, and Diana didn't allow herself to rush much as she wanted to less she make a mess of things. Not that she could, she supposed, bound as tight as she was, and they weren't able to discuss what she'd do because Shug would be back at some point, surely, and even if there were two of them, they'd both been knocked in the head. And she had to get Sophie's hands free. Both their legs.   
  
She was getting ahead of herself.  
  
Without any watch she had no idea how long it took her but there was sweat beading on her upper lip, the lightness in her head that came from holding her breath without meaning to then huffing in and out, until at last she'd not managed to completely untie herself but had slackened the bindings off enough to slide her thumbs into her palms and slip her hands free.   
  
"Diana?" She looked over her shoulder to Sophie, catching the ropes in her fingers as she scooted back to where she'd started off, head dropped towards her chest before she leaned over to head-butt the other woman carefully. "You did it."  
  
"Yep." Easing them into her lap, she rolled her wrists, flexed her fingers, and rubbed her hands. No damage that she could detect for the moment and it had her heart leaping. "C'mere, turn round and I'll get you sorted out."  
  
If she stole a little kiss then it was earned down here in a damp, glancing up at the ceiling above them waiting for other signs of life as she prepared them both for whatever was to come next.  
  


* * *

  
  
They stopped at Inchcailloch first because it was the only place that made sense, a wide perimeter of the island as visitors stopped on and off, making their way round to the shallower waters by the campsite and true to what they'd been told there was neither hide nor hair of Diana or Sophie. The boat wasn't there either and Nora had to stop herself from cursing as Davey hopped off, accompanied by the girls, her watching and waiting until they came back with news she could've predicted: no one had seen them, no one had seen the boat, sorry, have you tried—  
  
Her foul mood wouldn't do much for the search and she helped them all clamber back aboard before they began anew, a map spread out in front of them.  
  
"We're close enough to Clairinch and Torrinch we might as well," Davey said, pointing to them on the map and Nora nodded in agreement.  
  
"Then what, head off from Torrinch, go up round Inchfad and Ellanderroch then the rest?" Nora asked, looking between the rest of them for any signs of dissent. When she received none she started the boat up, easing past the tourists. "Someone got the binoculars?" She had to shout to be heard over the motor and the rush of wind now, almost choking on her own spit when she called out.  
  
"We've got 'em!" Either Violet or Jillian shouted back, she couldn't tell over the noise as Davey joined her though he was squinting as badly as she was.  
  
"You reckon he's dumped it?"   
  
"No, he'll not have had the time if they've only been gone from some point today and someone would've noticed out here; it's summer tourist season, too busy for a boat to be dumped without a person noticing." It took relatively little time to get them out to Clairinch first for a steer about, nothing on the horizon before she set them on course for Torrinch next. "Anyone sees a boat about they'll think someone's camping out somewhere, probably not say much."  
  
"Could've had Kevin—" Davey cut himself off, stricken. Nora couldn't lift a hand to reach out to him, much as she wanted to; no matter his involvement, she still felt badly for the boy, for whatever had gotten him dragged into all this in the first place.   
  
"It's not your fault," she said as loudly as she dared, something she'd not said enough to folk since all this had begun because how often did anyone want to hear that even if they needed to? "You can't help folk who don't want it even when they need it, they can't always accept that help, it's shit but it's how it is."  
  
"I keep thinking there's something I missed, something more but then I know. I was the same." Davey shook his head, glowering out over the water or maybe that was just the sun reflecting back in his eyes, Nora couldn't tell.  
  
Torrinch proved to be as much of a dud as Clairinch and she turned them about to have them on a good clear course when there was yelling from the back of the boat to stay put and come look.  
  
"I'll go," Davey said and Nora waited, her skin prickling, the restlessness without direction giving her time already to think through all the horrific things that might be happening: she knew unscrupulous hunters and their codes better than Diana even because out of the two of them, Nora spent more time on the hunting these days, had ever since Jillian had come along and priorities had shifted. She knew what people were capable of and her mind didn't allow her not to envisage it, a horror show she couldn't turn off even with her eyes screwed shut.  
  
"Nora!" From the tone she'd been faraway, voices shouting at her for too long when she heard her name and jumped, Jillian holding out the binoculars but unwilling to move from her post. "Nora you need to look at this so we're sure."  
  
Stepping away, she took the binoculars, still just about able to crowd in behind her niece since there wasn't much room left anywhere else and neither girl was willing to get out of the way as she adjusted them; sure enough there was what looked like a solitary boat out by Creinch. She stared through the binoculars for longer than she needed to; putting off returning the looks she knew were on her: they all wanted it to be the boat Diana and Sophie had borrowed for the day but could it be that quick and that easy?  
  
 _We've earned it_ , she thought with a savage fierceness that burned,  _we've more than earned it._  
  
"It's the right name—" Violet was the first to break the silence and Nora nodded tightly, handing Jillian the binoculars back.  
  
"Looks like it, I'll take us in, get a closer look to see what we're dealing with."  
  
No one said much else as she steered them in a wide arc about it; Creinch was near impossible to wade through in the summer, an aptly named island for the trees that covered the whole of it with wild garlic and hyacinths and some wood anemones for good measure. There wasn't any chance they'd have been taken there but it was a sound plan to drop the boat off here and come back for it when no one else would be about except for a look, maybe some photos. Had he been watching them the whole time? Waiting? Her hands curled, imaging an old man's throat until she startled at a light touch on her back: Jillian, hair a wild tangle, cheeks tinged red from the wind and the cold air out on the water.  
  
"Mum had to go help someone off there once when she was with a rescue group, d'you remember?" Nora did not, in fact, remember, but she made a noise so Jillian would keep talking as they got closer to the boat, unsure of what she might find. "There's nothing on there so…so they won't be there."  
  
"We don't know that."  
  
"But we do. It's like Inchmurrin but that's too busy, or Inchconnachan—"  
  
Nora turned her head sharply, wincing when it popped. "What did you say?"  
  
"Inchconnachan?" Jillian repeated, somewhere between blank and scared in the way you lost at a certain point and never managed to regain though not for lack of trying in Nora's experience.  
  
"We're going to check the boat, see if there things are there or any clues and next? We're off to Inchconnachan."  
  


* * *

  
  
They'd slackened their knots in their legs enough that if the worst came to the worst, they'd be able to slide free once they were both more sure about no one coming to disturb them and look about for something that might make a suitable weapon. Standing up with their legs bound, even with them slackened off, had proved to be impossible, probably by design, so that had put an end to much of the exploration above a certain height. And they'd need to get full feeling back too once they were up and on their feet again too when the opportunity came. The stairs up to the rest of the house or whatever lay above them were noisy, that much they both knew, but if they had something suitable it might work. If Shug didn't have a gun on him. There was also the absence of Kevin. Sophie didn't want to talk about it, changing the subject each time Diana tried to bring it up until she eventually gave up and dropped the matter altogether; Sophie rested her head on her shoulder in something that was maybe gratitude but she was too sore to look at her face at that point, neither of them ready to do much exploration when it wasn't definitely getting on for them to be checked on. Their talking had tapered off as thirst started to get the better of them and Diana fought to keep the panic that welled up in her at odd moments at bay; the water had been left there, either as a test to see if they were going to go for it no matter what or as proof they'd worked themselves free.  
  
Or, worst of all, that they would be left here. Only a handful of days without water before you died and it wasn't a pleasant death.  
  
"They'll be looking for us."  
  
Sophie's voice was a whisper in her ear. Easier to whisper with dry mouths, less chance to be overheard if someone was about. Not that they'd heard but Diana wasn't about to trust either of them when they could both be concussed and not entirely aware of it at the moment.   
  
"What d'you think they'll find? I mean he can't have been stupid enough to have used the same boat, he's got one of his own." Diana fidgeted, flexing her hands again; they were as out of the bindings as they dared right now, still light outside but a little darker. Or maybe it was just being down here peering up through a tiny window.   
  
"He'll have had to moor his somewhere, two of them—" Sophie broke off, swearing quietly.  
  
Diana turned then, almost clattering their heads together. "What?"  
  
"The girls."  
  
"You don't think…"  
  
"Between their stubbornness and your sister?"  
  
"Fuck." Diana spared another glance outside but there wasn't much of a view, only a distraction from the conversation at hand and the impending headache that could be many things, none of them anything she wanted to dwell on. "Davey'll be shouted down then?"  
  
"He'll be gung-ho too, you know that. Swept up with it."  
  
"I—"  
  
A door opened and closed, footsteps overhead and they shared a look before wriggling back into their bindings, taking a deep breath to see who would come clomping down the stairs if they would at all. And come down they did, someone younger and rangy, a hesitant step after fumbling attempts to get the trapdoor open, a figure that could only belong to Kevin. It was the first time Diana had seen him outside the couple of pictures they'd shared during the research prior to kicking off today's events and they didn't accurately match up to how gaunt a young man he was, someone in need of a real bed to sleep in and some good hot meals. Despite the situation she and Sophie found herself in, it was impossible not to experience a surge of pity for the state he was in, closing the trapdoor and hesitating before he reached the bottom of the steps. Watching them maybe.   
  
"Kevin?" Sophie was the one to speak, raising her voice even though it cracked on the single word.  
  
Sure enough, he emerged with a tray in his hands, stopping short of them to stare and look them over. Sunburnt but pale everywhere else, dark hair that he'd been dragging his hands through, clothes that he swam in; if Davey had been like this once then he'd filled out again over the years of getting the help he deserved and needed and settling into a new life. Small wonder, indeed, that this was something he and Sophie dedicated themselves to if it was something werewolves were vulnerable to, like everyone else struggling through. There weren't any other support groups but their own.  
  
"Sophie." His voice was full of shame and regret, hardened with something else that if Diana had to put a name to it would be resignation as he set the tray down and looked at the untouched water then above to the ceiling. "You've not had anything?"  
  
"Would you?"  
  
"If I was thirsty…you need to drink something, you'll not be well if you don't."  
  
He was earnest about it, and Diana sighed before she cleared her throat. "We don't know if there's anything in it Kevin."  
  
"In—oh like drugs? Hugh doesn't approve of those." His voice dropped to a mumble, a flush up around his ears, useful, maybe, and he was uncapping the bottle for them.  
  
"Not just drugs, there are things that kill us," there wasn't much of an emphasis on it but just enough and the intensity of Sophie's gaze said it anyway, "faster than they would Diana."  
  
"Oh…oh. Hang on." Carefully, Kevin uncapped the bottle and took a swig. Diana swore that the sides of her throat stuck together as he swallowed, wiping it clean after. "Is that better?"  
  
 _We're tied up in a random cellar after we were knocked out and brought here by the people who hurt our daughters and we don't know what the hell is going on so no, not better, a country mile short of better._  
  
But Diana was parched and when Kevin offered the water out to her she accepted it, forcing herself to take small sips lest she make herself sick, Sophie doing the same. It was lukewarm from how long it had been sitting out, taunting them almost, but far better than the discomfort of a dry mouth and tongue and a throat that burned every time she tried swallowing. Knowing that she was accepting water from the man who'd bitten her daughter wasn't something she'd pictured herself doing, in the immediate aftermath she'd wanted nothing more than to become the sort of person Shug had but vengeance was an empty game and seeing Kevin,  _knowing_  what she did?  
  
It didn't entirely douse the anger but it kept it in check as she shifted herself, Kevin flinching. He had to know who she was; there was no way he could be completely in the dark because he'd seen her. He'd been there. He'd been close enough to bite her daughter while Diana had been—she could hardly remember all the fine details of it now, she didn't trust her own memory of it but he knew of her and whatever else he might have been told.  
  
"Are you—he doesn't want you to be hurt…" Kevin was looking at her though his gaze flicked to Sophie as well. He'd know Sophie best but there was no telling what he thought of himself, whatever he'd been fed to bring him to this point and that was as bad as leaving a loaded gun in the room.  
  
"We've been hit round the head and tied up for hours, we're pretty hurt already," she replied flatly, looking him in the eye until he was forced to look away. Sophie turned to her but Diana didn't look back, making to nudge Kevin with her foot but he moved away, too fast for her. "Kevin, we—"  
  
Her stomach, recently filled with water as it was, growled and the three of them were reminded of the tray Kevin had brought with him, the absurdity of the situation they were in.  
  
"How do we eat if you had to hold the water up to us?"  
  
"Hugh…"  
  
If he'd been standing, Diana was sure he'd have been jiggling a knee, instead he chewed his lip, glancing up again – maybe Hugh wasn't about, maybe he was, maybe just the spectre of him was enough at this point to have the boy (because he was, up close he was barely more than a boy) flinching in expectation of a blow to come. All of it had her wanting to sleep, if she was being honest, not herself enough to go navigating any of this as whatever maths he was doing in his head played out on his face.  
  
"Can we get a hand free at least? Kevin," she took a chance, scooting herself forward an inch at the most. This time Kevin didn't react, "if you were in this situation, would you rather someone let your hand out or would you have someone feed you like an animal?"  
  
"We're not going to do anything to you Kevin," Sophie added, voice soft near Diana's ear and she must've moved too, gotten herself a bit closer to him but there was no telling how he felt about his own kind with someone like Hugh's influence running roughshod over him. "But my head's bursting and I might be sick if I don't eat. All the same? I'm a grown woman and I'm not letting you feed me like I'm a baby."  
  
Kevin mumbled something too quick and quiet for either of them to catch it, chin down by his chest. When asked to repeat it, despite all of it, Diana found it still broke her heart: he didn't want to get in trouble.  
  
Sophie gave her a look before Kevin could make any moves towards them, nudging him with her bound legs about as much as she could. "Does he…does he hurt you, Kevin?"  
  
"I don't know," Kevin replied, not looking at either of them. He sat down properly instead then seemed to think better of it, knees to his chest, arms wrapped around them, hugging them tight.  
  
"What does he do?" Diana asked, fighting the urge to move when her foot cramped up lest he startle worse than a deer now that he was here in a moment where he seemed willing to sit down and talk to them. "I can't imagine he must be a lot of fun to be around when it's the full moon."  
  
His shoulders pulled inward and he bit his lip, as if that would stop it from wobbling but his whole chin was going, eyes watery as they darted about. It'd be easy to blame his knees being pulled tight as they were to his chest for his shuddering breathing but Diana knew what it sounded like when someone was trying desperately to hold their tears at bay the way he was doing now, the painful heaving to control it; maybe even this much wasn't allowed. Hugh was her parents' generation. Men like her dad certainly hadn't grown up showing much emotion or affection beyond a certain age, lessons engrained in them and as much as her dad  _tried_ , Hugh hadn't. Hugh had remained set in his ways with his wife's death. Around a vulnerable young man?  
  
It made her all the more angry.  
  
"He doesn't—he doesn't belt me or anything, it's not like—" Kevin sucked in a shuddery breath, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. "But there's just…I don't like what he says. Or sometimes when he says nothing for a long time it's worse. I don't know why it's worse."  
  
"Davey was looking for you." Sophie spoke before Diana could, probably for the best since there wasn't much that Diana could add, she didn't know the situation the same way and one of them should probably keep an ear out for any commotion that might herald Hugh. Wherever he was. One of them would need to ask. "He was worried, we all are, but he does know. What it's like."  
  
"I didn't—I can't—"  
  
"Whatever trouble you're in, there are  _always_  people who can help you; d'you know that's how I even met Diana in the first place? Someone shot me with wolfs bane and I was sick, I could've died and her sister Nora helped save my life. That's why we're all here now, isn't it?"  
  
"Is that why we were picked?" Diana asked the question despite herself, too morbid not to and Kevin nodded then seemed to think better of it.  
  
"Just mattered that it was a werewolf and a hunter. I…I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I don't want to be this horrible thing and I did it to your girl didn't I," he was starting to rock back and forward, face pale and stricken, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."  
  
"Kevin," Diana shut her eyes a moment and steadied herself. The night didn't play out the way she thought it would but it was still there: Jillian in the backseat, a bloodied mess, her panic caught in the back of her throat, a buzz of words that must've been her and Nora trying to talk to one another, and the wolf that had been Kevin as he melted away again before she could do anything. "Kevin she's all right. She's…she's made her peace with it. No one thinks differently of her. We still love her. We'll always love her. Sophie and Violet being there? I couldn't have done it without their support but she'd still be my daughter. Now, I've always known about werewolves, that makes it easier, but she's still my girl that I love, just a little different. She just needs a little help adjusting right now. And…" She broke off, biting her lip and letting the sigh out her nose instead, the dam breaking. "I don't blame you. I did. I was angry until I knew what was going on, that you were someone who needed the sort of people around her that she's got.  
  
"Kevin," she tried and he was staring back at her, mouth a little agape and she'd take that as a good sign though god she'd take anything at this point, "let us help you and we can all get out of this."  
  


* * *

  
  
"You're sure about Inchconnachan?"  
  
Davey had asked her that enough times on the approach – they could see it looming in the distance now it was starting to get darker – that Nora was beginning to have second thoughts and  _that_  was bringing out what her mother had always called the thrawn streak in her.   
  
"Where else is going to have somewhere he can stash them?" She cut the motor so they could hear one another without shouting since her voice had enough of a scratchiness to it that suggested it'd be gone by the morning if it held out that long. "He'll need somewhere quiet and if his boat's not in then he'll not have been to the mainland yet."  
  
"I mean he could—"  
  
"He's an old man," Violet, who Nora hadn't reckoned on including herself in the conversation so more fool her for not pitching her voice lower, stepped up, huddled further into her jacket. It had been a long day and the chill was coming in even for summer. "He'd have a job getting them in a motor if he had to move them."  
  
"He'd have Kevin," Davey pointed out though there was a lack of conviction behind it as he took a seat then thought better of it when the boat rocked.  
  
Not much of a seaman it seemed.  
  
"And you think they'd get them off Inchcailloch, off a boat, into a car and away?" Violet stared him down and even hunkered into her jacket against a gust of wind that had the water rippling it did what it was meant to; Davey looked away and she took her moment of victory. "Someone would've seen or heard something, right?"  
  
Jillian nodded, easing her way over. The binoculars had been clamped tight enough to her eyes that they'd left little red indents about the sockets. "It's worth having a look, I mean what'd happen if we missed them? We still have to go back before it gets too dark and that looks like his boat. We've been sat here for how long now all of us saying 'aye that's The Murron so it is' like we should be wearing waders and calling ourselves Sandy."  
  
No one said anything for a long time until Nora cleared her throat. "You…you need to stop watching whatever comes on after the One Show or that daft yin with the long hair and the big scarf who just wanders about staring into the distance if that's what you're coming out with."  
  
"I'm…I'm really hungry."  
  
Which was a fair point: the plan had been to meet up in the car park and eat and no one had done that. Nora didn't have an appetite, not exactly; instead her stomach was a clenched fist that could have been many things. Better to approach this with something in it though and she dug into one of the rucksacks for some of the leftover scran they'd brought, scrounging through energy bars and sweeties and crisps, half-finished and lukewarm bottles of juice that they passed between them on what had to be high up there in the history of terrible stakeouts. Two grown-ups and two teenagers sitting out on an open loch in a borrowed boat like a bunch of tits. At least it gave everyone time to do something that wasn't questioning the plan that they hadn't settled on, the destination they'd sailed to without honestly going on more than gut instinct and Nora's knowledge – harder to argue it without all their research notes with them it seemed, like the nightmares where you were back at school suddenly and having to do an exam you hadn't revised for – and the tight band around her skull slackened somewhat.  
  
"Now," Nora choked down the last of the energy bar that hadn't been worth whatever inflated price tag it would've come with, "we need to decide what we're going to do once we get there. Since…we… _haven't_."  
  
"Initial sweep round the island from a distance. You two," Davey used his juice bottle to point to Violet and Jillian in turn, "stay out of sight as much as possible since he's the type to have those maximum strength binoculars where you could see the bawhair on a flea."  
  
"I don't ever want to hear words like that from you again Davey, I thought we were pals," Violet complained, pulling a face. "Partners in crime don't do that."  
  
"These are the harsh realities they don't show you on whatever you watch where every lad has a sprayed on six pack and not Greggs sausage roll belly."  
  
Jillian froze mid-bite. Considered it. Then continued. Truly Nora's niece. "Where are we going to go, exactly? It's a wee boat not Roman Abramovich's luxury yacht."  
  
"How do you even know who he is?" Nora asked.  
  
"Does it matter right now?"  
  
"Yes. Yes it does."  
  
"He was about one summer, just a big obnoxious shiny yacht and him swanning about the place all 'hey check me out I'm minted because football'."  
  
"Jesus wept," Davey muttered under his breath but the shaking of his shoulders gave away his laughter.  
  
" _Anyway_ ," Nora said about as loud as she dared where her voice might carry. "We can do that and stay hidden then we go on foot. Four of us and potentially two of them. I don't particularly like the idea of you two being anywhere near him but I don't want to leave you on a boat just in case something happens."  
  
"We wouldn't stay." The response came in stereo. Much as she expected and she couldn't exactly deny them as much as she knew she should: if anyone had a stake in this it was them but they were little more than girls, they didn't need to see all the harsh realities depending on how it went.   
  
"Right then if that's settled then we remember the rules: we stick together. You listen to both of us. And if something happens you both run back to the boat, I think we've enough faith that you can work out the controls if you need to." Davey's advice was sensible enough though it raised a real possibility that it might go badly since they didn't have any idea what they'd be walking into with Hugh and Kevin both there, if Diana and Sophie were still—  
  
No. Nora couldn't think that way. The girls hadn't given in at any rate or if they had they weren't showing any signs of it so she wouldn't either.  
  
"Your phones'll work here and there's some emergency gear if needed. Come up front with me while I take us around and you can see how it all works."  
  
"For the love of whatever god is pissing on us, don't crash us into the island."  
  
Davey's mutter was met with an eye roll from Jillian and a slap on the arm, one that had to have stung from the sound of it and the way she waved her hand to cool it off, a fleeting glimpse of cherry red palm on the way.  
  
"It'd be brilliant to just," there was an exploding noise from Jillian, her smile not as bright as it might be under a normal circumstance but still present at the very least, "ramp right into his boat, some CSI Miami shit."  
  
"Lesson one," Nora began as she waved them both either side of her and started the boat up. "No CSI Miami shit. Lesson two is no explosions before either of you ask."  
  


* * *

  
  
They were well into the evening with no sign of Hugh returning by the time Kevin freed Sophie and Diana long enough for them to eat and – one at a time at least – to stretch out legs that had cramps, unable to watch either of them when the pins and needles had them both hissing and cursing. Fortunately neither of them needed to pee yet because Sophie didn't know what the arrangements were regarding that and personally she dreaded them and the idea of being escorted off somewhere only to be unable to go despite how badly she might need to but they'd made progress.  
  
More than that: Kevin had seen the work made of their bindings when he'd freed them to eat at first and had said nothing, slowly opening up to them as Sophie picked and chose her moments.  
  
"What happens to us then? Does he have any plans?" She asked when she settled down again after a circuit of the room, glad that the pain in her head had finally settled to the sort of ache she assumed was normal for this sort of situation. And if not well there was little enough she could do about it.   
  
"What d'you mean?" Kevin asked, peering up and out of the window though like them he was sat, cross-legged now, arms stretched behind him to balance himself and looking all the more comfortable for it than he had hunkered up earlier (hours maybe but god she wasn't able to keep track of time without her stuff which was hopefully still on the boat or stashed elsewhere, not that she'd know since she didn't know what time they'd been taken in the first place).  
  
"Hugh's been gone for longer than we were expecting him to be," Diana said, rolling her shoulders. One of them popped, the sound loud in the quiet of the cellar. Kevin made a face at the noise, staring at her shoulder until he seemed to realise he was staring and looked away again.  
  
"He's…he's going to get rid of your boat, he never really said what he'd be doing with it but it's not on Inchcailloch anymore, it got moved so—" Kevin huffed, aggrieved, cheeks flushing. "I don't think he trusted me that much with it to know bits but he'll not be back tonight."  
  
"And he's taken The Murron." Sophie didn't need the confirmation, didn't pitch it upwards into a question but Kevin nodded all the same, his apology a single word, a breathy whisper. "We're stuck here."  
  
"I think they'll be out looking and if we weren't back they could still be on the water, they might see him, might see our boat."  
  
"And then what?"  
  
"Nora knows here – does Davey?"  
  
Sophie had to think about it for a moment and she ended up shrugging helplessly. "I've no idea, he might know places we've been looking at but probably not the same amount of detail as you two seem to."  
  
"Think about it: there's only so many places we could be, there's every chance they could find us."  
  
"You think we're that lucky?"  
  
"I'd say we're owed it at this point."  
  
"Can't believe I'm the one saying this," Sophie muttered, flicking her gaze Kevin's way as he looked between the two of them suddenly aware that there  _were_  two of them and one of him, and both of them out of their bonds, able to move if they had to now they'd been fed and watered. "Should we be just casually chatting about this here and now?"  
  
"Kevin," Diana's hand reached out, hesitated, then went for it, a broadcasted move he could've avoided but he braced himself and allowed it with a shallow nod. "D'you want away from him? He doesn't care about you Kevin, he's using you for his own ends. Think about what we told you about his wife, about the sort of man he is and that he's not told you everything. How he makes you feel about yourself and who you are when you've got folk out there who'll always be there whenever you need them no matter what."  
  
Kevin swallowed tightly, his face pursing the way it had earlier in the day and Sophie leaned in even though it hurt her knees something awful to do it. "Sweetheart, I know you've done something bad, something you think you can't go walking back but you won't know until you try. And one of those people is right here. She's right here now willing to give you a chance and I know her girl, I know her sister. They'd be just as willing. Will you help us? Please?"  
  
"The whole…forgiveness thing you two were on about?" Kevin still sounded dubious and that was fair enough. From what they'd gotten out of him it had been far from an easy ride with Hugh who could treat you decent if you toed the line though where the line was seemed to vary, moving with the winds and the tides, dizzying for someone not struggling with themselves the way Kevin was. It had been a painstaking circular conversation sat down in the cool of the cellar.  
  
Not too unlike talking to Jillian when she'd been in bandages with a feral look in her eye or Diana and her white knuckles wrapped around her mug in the kitchen in the small hours.   
  
 _It's there_ , Sophie thought and it could go either way, a spooked deer liable to bolt or hurtle right into an oncoming motor.  _Just be brave. Take a chance._  
  
(How many times he might've been bitten to put him off, she couldn't say, sometimes it only took the once and that was that, he'd had a bad hand dealt by all accounts.)  
  
"If I do the right thing—" Kevin broke off with a laugh that could go either way. "What's the right thing? I don't know but I've done enough bad things now; will it cause trouble?"  
  
Diana and Sophie shared a look, neither one of them wanting to go first but Diana hadn't said much so when she opened her mouth, Sophie nodded before she could second guess herself and shut it. "There's always hunter like Hugh and folk know about this whole situation because we were trying to get answers but I don't want any harm to come to you. Most wouldn't. It's not the bad old days no more. They know, well, they don't personally but they can be sympathetic. We can all get her blood up; it's Shug who'll catch the heat."  
  
Kevin nodded, twisting his hands. Not as satisfied as Sophie thought he'd be with that answer when it dawned on her, a stone sinking heavily, deeply, into a dark well seldom disturbed. "You think it'll be the werewolves going mad over it." Kevin nodded, a croaked 'sorry' following that she almost missed. "How bad?"  
  
Kevin flinched but to his credit he didn't hesitate. "Rabid. The pack you have to cull. Then everyone would see what they're about. Why we have to go back to the old days."  
  
"That's what all this is about" Diana's voice rose, incredulous, Kevin nodding along. "Look- he's going to get people killed to prove a point from decades ago. It was a tragic accident, what happened to Murron, made worse by him keeping her in the dark; Kev in—"  
  
"I know," he interrupted; maybe brave enough now to do that. "I think…I know I don't want more people getting hurt because of something I did."  
  
"So we're going then?" Sophie asked as Kevin started work on removing all of her bindings, allowing her to get to her feet and stretch.  
  
"All of us," Diana replied in answer to his look as they both started on hers. "Nothing'll happen to you, I promise."  
  
Diana's words seemed to be what he needed to hear; all that was left of Kevin's resistance crumbled and he nodded. "Your things are just up the stairs, let's go, we can hide out and steal his boat before he knows we're gone."  
  


* * *

  
  
With the girls either side of her, Nora went round the island heading north-east, Davey hunkered down at the rear with the binoculars scanning about for whatever he could. She almost wanted to turn and see what sort of spectacle he was making of himself because any other day it would've been a sight.   
  
At the same time another boat left, heading south-west but with the wind in her ears Nora heard nothing but her own instructions that Jillian and Violet repeated back to her.  
  
Davey's noise of an alarm went unnoticed but not the heavy pounding of his feet as he tripped over them to clap Nora's shoulder, his voice loud in her ear when he grabbed her. "Hugh just left." He wheezed the words, fingers painfully tight. "Nora, Hugh just left, he's on The Murron, he was off at a fair clip and it was just him far as I could see."  
  
Nora froze, cursed a blue streak that had both girls wincing at her and pointed to the small seats. "Hang on tight, I'll turn us about. Remember the plan."  
  
No one spoke, only nodding their agreement as she took them in, calculating how long to berth, tie off, make it to the bungalow. She almost overshot in the end, trapped in her head as she was but they made it, everyone hopping out in silence, rucksacks slung over their shoulders. It was only as she readied herself to give the instructions they'd gone over already a final time that she heard the rustling that wasn't the wind in the trees accompanied by the utter absence of birdsong.  
  
Signalling for Davey to help herd the girls between them, she drew her knife and stalked towards it.  
  


* * *

  
  
A boat pulled up, Kevin freezing from where he was crouched behind them; Diana reached blindly behind her to squeeze his arm, finger to her lips and he nodded. She let go, reaching for Sophie's hand, wanting to kiss her. They hadn't when they'd been stuck down in the cellar and if there was a chance before all this was over, if it was Hugh come back far earlier than expected, if they weren't able to do this, then she'd kiss her in case this went wrong. But there were too many sets of footsteps for it to be just Hugh no matter how quiet they were trying to be as her cramping legs forced her to move. No one could be completely still or silent crouched in the bushes trying to peer out for a chance to steal a boat; they were all just counting on Hugh being harassed. On Hugh being older.  
  
Surely he didn't have more helpers—  
  
There was a glint, bright even in the ever-gathering dark.  _Knife_ , Sophie mouthed to her and she nodded, only able to see legs.  
  
 _Familiar_  legs.  
  
Without even thinking about it she was moving, Sophie grabbing for her; the hands were weightless, Diana was running, arms outstretched, tears blurring her vision, breath caught in her throat stopping her from speaking.   
  
"Diana!" Nora sheathed her knife and ran into her, grabbing her tight in a savage embrace that Diana returned, sobbing loud and wet in her sister's ear as another body – Jillian, it was Jillian, it was her girl there and safe and alive – barged into them, three more racing past them and she could make out some sort of commotion of Sophie being embraced by Violet, more tears and gasping, and Davey taking hold of Kevin.  
  
"Jilly-bean," she pulled away from Nora, wiping her face only for more tears to follow. "Oh sweetheart, oh you're safe."  
  
" _Mum_ ," Jillian sobbed, clutching at her the way she had when she'd been little with skinned knees from coming off the swing. "Mum are you—I was—Mum—" She hiccupped from tears, breath hitching.  
  
"I'm okay; we're okay, all of us."  
  
"I hate to break this moment up," Davey interrupted with a voice thick and rough, an arm around Kevin as if he feared he'd disappear and maybe he wasn't wrong to do so. "But I reckon we should be getting off here while the getting's good and heading home. All of us. Put the word out about what's happened."  
  
"I…I could go for that," Kevin agreed. "If there's room on the boat."  
  
"I made you a promise," Diana said, smiling at him as Nora began to steer Violet and Jillian towards it, eager to get them away from here, Davey following with Kevin in tow which left Diana and Sophie standing alone, staring out at the bungalow. "Job's a good 'un then?"  
  
"God, job's a good 'un," Sophie agreed, catching her by the belt loops of her jeans. "C'mere."  
  
It was Sophie that pulled her into this kiss, all hungry and wanting, salt on her lips, hands in her hair catching in the tangles. They had an audience by the boat and not enough time but they'd made it, they'd made it and they'd earned it.  
  


* * *

  
  
Summer had passed with one last burst of heat that warranted lazing about in the garden doing nothing at all except for indulging in a barbecue because finally they had the weather for it, didn't they, one last little thing before school went back for Jillian and Violet now they'd been split up back at their own homes ago; no more investigations though there were texts, phone calls, messages of all sorts, plenty of trips back and forth together with one another and now groups of their friends meeting. Diana's house, well Diana and Nora's house because god forbid Nora live in her own place yet really and not be a semi-permanent lodger, was a sight nicer than where they'd all been shacked up together during the investigation though there was a part of her that missed the place.  
  
 _Later_ , Diana had said when they'd tried slipping off in the kitchen but the kitchen was, by all rights, too busy for any of that nonsense,  _Get someone to babysit and we'll have a dirty weekend together, pretend we're still young things._  
  
Diana's mother had overheard part of it, inhaled her gin and tonic up her nose laughing, then whipped Diana square on the arse with a tea towel to chase her out of her own kitchen.  
  
Nora was manning the barbecue looking more like a dad than any dad Sophie had seen; a truly hideous bucket hat that might have been about when they'd first been popular, shorts that looked like they were mostly pockets, and whatever else she had on was obscured by her apron as she chased folk away with her tongs.  
  
"She's a menacing crab, that one," Davey commented as he sat himself down in a chair that sagged dangerously, a coke dangling in his hands.  
  
"There's a lot of jokes I could be making and the restraint I'm showing might rupture something. Good thing Erin's here."  
  
"Piss off," Davey muttered but he looked over to where Diana's pal was chatting away to Kevin who'd come along with Davey, semi-roommates for the moment when he wasn't in his group house; everyone needed a bit of quiet and Davey's place had plenty of that. "How's tricks?"  
  
"It sounds terrible after everything but I'm dying for her to be back at school only so I'm not clearing up after her every five minutes or finding her under my feet when I turn round. 'Sides, makes other things easier."  
  
"Your lassie gets shot and you finally get a woman, don't know what to make of that."  
  
"My lassie gets shot and  _you_  maybe get close to getting a woman that's," Sophie peered over her sunglasses, "Yep, that's smacking someone trying to interfere with her meat."  
  
"You don't go telling—Nope, nope, nope, not walking into that one."  
  
Sophie leant back, sipping her beer with her eyes closed until someone sat themselves down on her knee, too heavy to be Violet in a month of Sundays and she tipped her face up for a kiss as Davey groaned and left, muttering away to himself.   
  
"State of him acting like I didn't catch him and my sister hands down each other's drawers on a Tuesday night no less." Diana stole his vacated seat, dragging it closer so she didn't have to raise her voice as the young lot started playing music. "D'you hear that they found old Shug then?"  
  
Sophie choked on her beer, Diana patting her on the back until it passed and she could breathe again. "No! Who told you?"  
  
"Few pals did who know his mates, Nora doesn't know yet, don't know how to break it to her yet but…finally found him. Took them weeks, he was up in some wee bothy, squirrelled himself away all good and proper so he did but aye, that's him."  
  
"What happens then? We never went to the polis I mean…"  
  
"Thought all of us could get together. Past time we all sat down and had a proper chat about things. What better time than after a good feed eh?"  
  
Sophie nodded her agreement, liking the idea. Maybe it was past time that the old guard made way for the new guard. "That caretaking thing then."  
  
"Something like that. Better place for our girls."  
  
 _Our girls_ , Diana said and it was the truth. Sophie leant forward, fingers on Diana's jaw and kissed her, all artificial coconut of her sunscreen and whisky.  
  
"We'll figure it out," Sophie said when she broke the kiss and Diana grinned it her. They'd gotten this far on those words and she was sure they'd get further still on them.


End file.
